Between the Minds
by caliginousStrider
Summary: And then he was kissing her. There was nothing romantic in the gesture, there was only desperation. He kissed her over and over and over.
1. Chapter 1

He hunched over her body, dead silent and focused with his expression taught and unreadable. The only giveaway to his actual feelings at that moment was the near imperceptible trembling of his hands as he reticently grazed her face with his fingertips.

"Dave"

His name. It was as if he were submerged in water, a mile between himself and the sound of his name, repeating. "Dave. DAVE." _Shut up._ His brow furrowed slightly. His hand moved over her mouth and nose. No breath. His heart was thumping hard and fast in his throat and it was all he could do to keep his breathing steady. "Harley," he mouthed, barely a whisper. Her eyes were slightly open, a hint of brilliant green against placid, pale skin flecked with blood. Dave shuddered and laughed. No, not really a laugh. It was almost a sob, almost the hitch of the breath; a prelude to a scream. "Harley" He said, louder this time, but breathy as he struggled to keep his tone even and to hold his limbs steady, a shuddering hand hovering over her right cheek. He was steadily losing control of his breathing and his eyes were wide beneath his sunglasses. "Harley" he said more urgently as if he could reach her if only he could call loud enough for her to hear. He stared silently for a second. And another.

And another.

Despite himself he was trembling and pressing the bridge of his nose flush against her forehead; his breath creating clouds on her glasses. "Jade." He mumbled against her face. "Jade. Jade. JADE." His breath hitched with every repetition of her name, and he began repeating it faster and more fervently as his composure slipped. "Oh my God, Jade. Come ON." His body convulsed and he shook her. His heart was racing and he kept his face to her, eyes wide open, searching for any signs of a breath or a pulse. He could hear the blood in his ears and he repeated his mantra, her name, and he shook her again. Harder this time.

And then.

And then he was kissing her. There was nothing romantic in the gesture, there was only desperation. He kissed her over and over and over. Tiny successive kisses on her lips and her eyes and her cheeks and his words were breathless and choked and half a sob; a sob that was more anger than despair. He wrapped one arm around her torso to lift her to him and cupped her face with his other hand, thumb thoughtlessly spreading the blood on her cheek as he kissed her more. He clutched her to him as he tried and tried and failed to revive her.

"Jade."

"Jade."

"Wake up."

"WAKE THE FUCK UP."

John was staring at Dave hunched over his sister. He was hesitant to approach him, he had never seen Dave lose control, but the blonde was shaking in a way that terrified him. He had tried talking to him, calling his name, asking him what had happened. From the pallor of his sister's skin he thought he knew, though, but he didn't want to believe it. Rose's hand had found his and he could hear her choking back a muffled sob beneath her free hand. He was acutely aware of the group of people who slowly moved in around him; his friends and allies, all lost in terrified silence at the lifeless body of Jade and the form of Dave above her, quickly losing control of the calm he normally shrouded himself in. At that moment, he wasn't sure what upset him more; the loss of his sister who he had spent the last three long years really getting to know and love, or his best friend convulsing with grief over her body.

How did it happen? They had all been so involved in their own fight that he didn't know if anyone had seen. Was it a heroic death? It would not have been Just, killing her could never have been Just, and he believed that fervently. Desperately. If it wasn't Heroic or Just, wouldn't she be okay? She would wake up. She could wake up. He held onto that idea as if it was a lifeline, but he couldn't control the knot that formed in his throat when he realized Dave was kissing her. Trying to resurrect her when he knew it was impossible.

He hadn't realized it before, but it was so painfully obvious now. The gentle way he had always treated her, differently from everyone else. His heart felt heavy as he walked toward his best friend and blinked away the beginnings of tears in his eyes. The idea that she could wake up kept his heart from plummeting, but the vision of his best friend in anguish was more than he thought he could handle. Dave was screaming his words now, his voice breaking awkwardly. John had never heard him scream.

Dave had gently laid her back on ground, hunched over her with his face still so near to hers. He was shaking from the effort of not screaming, both of his hands against the cold ground in tight fists. He breathed hard and erratically, visibly attempting to hold back something far worse.

And then Dave felt a hand on his shoulder, and the fight rushed out of him and he went slack. His breathing slowed and his expression went blank. Not in the way it always was; the Strider "poker face" he and his brother had patented. It was empty. He didn't move, his face still pressed against hers, his shaking arms barely holding up the rest of his body from collapsing onto Jade's.

And he spoke to John, his voice strained and his throat dry, but he was calm. At least he was calm.

"Just let me stay. Just let me fucking be."

He wanted to take him away from her, but right now simply keeping him calm was more important. Eventually they would have to separate them, but it could wait. He could give him more time. "Okay, alright," said John. "I'll be here."


	2. Chapter 2

"_Hey Dave! How about a kiss!"_

_Dave quickly jerked his head around only to be faced with a bright orange frog. Instead of pulling back in disgust, he leaned into the kiss with his eyes closed and let out a faux moan as his lips met with the unwilling face of the small amphibian. Pulling back, he said in a breathy voice, "I have wanted this for so long, you have no idea. I am just… so fucking into this." He leaned in for yet another kiss when Jade kicked him swiftly in the leg and bent double into a fit of giggles, dropping the traumatized frog into the snow._

_The sound of her laugh made his heart rate speed very slightly in a way he hadn't expected. _

"_I guess for that you deserve a real kiss!" Jade, still giggling, threw her arms around her friend and kissed him lightly on the cheek. He felt his ears burn at the touch of her lips on his face, but he kept a straight face as she released him._

"_You can't be getting up on me like that, Harley. I know it's hard to resist these Strider charms, but I'm a taken man now. My heart can only belong to one." At this, he turned his head in the direction of the frog he had just frenched. Jade broke down into a fit of giggles again and Dave let a real smile touch his lips. He didn't really care, he was having the time of his life, staring at her laughing through dark shades, heart still beating a little too fast in his chest from her touch. "Calm down Harley, lets get this shit going. We got places to be and frogs to catch."_

_She giggled lighly into her hand as she regained her balance. "Okay cool guy, lets go!"_

_She was everything he wasn't, all genuine smiles and honest, straight-forward words; there was nothing even remotely ironic about her. She was completely open in all the ways that he wasn't and couldn't be, and when she grabbed his hand to pull him alongside her as they moved through her cold, snowy world, he felt so, so warm._

* * *

He continued to hold himself above her body, acutely aware of each second passing in a slow procession, a metronome thrumming in his ears. It had not been that long since the touch of John's hand left his shoulder, but each second that Jade remained motionless and unbreathing felt like hours. Time was his realm, and right now his realm was crushing him beneath a tremendous weight. He thought of her alive, distant memories from years ago when they had still just been kids caught up in this idiotic fucking monstrosity of a game. He thought of her smiling at him and laughing and he did not have any idea how to process it or deal with it. Years of hiding his emotions and keeping an outward appearance of calm were back in practice and yet he still could not wrestle himself away from her body.

He had barely had any time with her despite the fact that he was made of the stuff. He had spent three long years with only a small handful of memories of her, traveling through the void and dream bubbles with his sarcastic, therapist-wannabe sister, who much to his displeasure always had some new diagnosis to throw at him to explain his behavior, and the insane trolls who, despite himself, he had grown to like. He had even, in a fit of hormonal need and possibly also general boredom, pressed Terezi against a wall and kissed her. As she nipped playfully at his mouth she had cackled softly in her borderline-psychotic way and brought a heat to his face that he could only associate with one other moment in his life. He had liked her. A lot. It made sense to be with her because of how well they got along, and how easily they understood each other. They were so alike, so it made sense, and his body had never really protested. Eventually, inevitably, the heat wore off and he stopped pressing her up against walls in dark corners of the meteor. Without complaint, as wordlessly as it had begun, they had gone back to simply being friends. Good friends. Best friends. She had loved someone else, anyway, and he had known it.

Fleetingly, he wondered where she was. If she saw him. He didn't really care. He couldn't really care about anything at that moment, only the burning realization that for three years he had been waiting for this girl, only to run out of time. Again. Always.

He thought of turning the time tables, going back to before he saw her drop to the ground, blood pooling beneath the gash in her throat. He had not even seen what had knocked her out of the sky; some invisible, horrible enemy that he could never revenge himself on. Nothing to chase but her body to the ground, and he realized with an ironic, empty smile that he would have done the same if the murderous bastard had been staring him in the eyes as she fell. He would have followed her. He could not have done anything else. But if he had gone back, she wouldn't be here, limp and broken. He would have saved her. Why didn't he? It was circular and complex and it made him want to yell out, but his face remained impassive. The complexities and possibilities where rattling in his head and at the end of it he did not try to go back. This timeline was set, and there was nothing else but a pile of dead Daves to look forward to if he gave into his impulse. He just stayed, and pressed himself against her, leaving an inch of space between his chest and hers.

"Fuck." He mouthed, any noise that came from him was muffled against her cheek, and in a brief relapse he shuddered again. Time was still dragging, and almost without realizing it he began to hum softly against her face. Some song he had been working on before this mess, something that had just come back to him. It felt nostalgic to hear himself sing it, felt good to focus his trembling deep in his throat to resonate the notes, soft, profound and soothing. He wrote lyrics in his head, and they were all jumbled. They were sad and wrong. His voice was hardly above a whisper, the notes in his throat smooth and deep, and while his hands trembled as he ran his fingers through her hair, he hummed without the faintest trace of shaking.


	3. Chapter 3

It had been years, three long years, and he was so much the same as she remembered. His white-blonde hair was longer and he was taller; once she had stood only slightly shorter than he had, but now he was probably a good half a foot taller than her. His expression, though, and the curve of his lips as he smirked at his friends was so familiar that she smiled uncontrollably as she watched him. In the midst of her contemplation, John had come up behind her to grab her dog ears playfully and with a laugh said, "Avert you're eyes, you're drooling." She turned on her heels to face him and gave him her best angry face. Her best was not all that good as it turned out and John just laughed at his sister and walked toward Dave to give him the tender bro embrace he had been talking about for the past three years. (It was both glorious and magnificent, and not a single person or troll was surprised by this.) She started toward him and he lifted his head, a smile touching his lips as John chattered away beside him in the direction of a disgruntled looking Karkat at an impressive speed.

If she was being honest with herself, she was feeling uncharacteristically shy. She had spent a good deal of time thinking about him. It was hard not to, with Davesprite around wearing the same face and generally being the same person. He was not the same person, though, and she was very aware of it. As much as she cared for Davesprite, it was only ever just friendship between them. The last time she had ever seen Dave Strider was as he lay dead in her arms, cut down by bullets from her own rifle. It was not a pleasant memory; her lips on his lifeless ones, blood finding its way into her shaking mouth and filling it with a distinctly unpleasant copper taste. It had brought him back, waking him up on Derse in his Dream self's body, but all she had seen as she walked away was his lifeless body haloed in red snow. The memories before that, though, the ones in the snow where she felt she had seen Dave let down his barriers just a little for her, laughing and playing and joking, and the heat in his ears when she gave him a harmless kiss on the cheek, those were the ones she lingered on.

In the time it had taken her to run through the memories in her mind, he was by her side with his hand on her head. He smirked at her and rustled her messy dark hair. "Hey."

"Hey yourself." She grinned up at him. They stared at each other for a split second longer than would have been considered normal. Dave's lips parted as if to say something, but without warning their homecoming was unceremoniously cut short by the appearance of Bec Noir and a slew of minions and ogres at his heels. Jade turned her head to face the adversaries and before she could say another word to the boy beside her, he had run into the fray turning back the time tables on his sword to return it to its unbroken state. "Everybody watch your backs!" she yelled at her friends as they quickly readied themselves for the unexpected fight.

She rose away from the ground, hands fixed in readiness for any action she may need to take, and she surveyed the battlefield from above. John was taking out throngs of minions and ogres easily with his giant hammer and pushing more back with his wind powers and Karkat stood at his back taking nearly just as much, moving and fighting gracefully with his sickle in hand, blood splattered carelessly around them and over the ground. They were all situated in the space where the giant ship she and John had traveled on had collided with the trolls' meteor.

Grabbing her weapon, she set her sights to the throngs of enemies on the ground. Rose and Kanaya were fighting back to back against another horde of enemies, and they were similarly having little trouble fending them off. Her friends could handle themselves here, but on the other end of the ship Dave, Terezi, Gamzee, and Sollux were fighting a losing battle with Noir and so she pointed her rifle in his direction. Using one hand to hold the weapon steady and the other to manipulate the space around her adversary, she froze the beast in place and pulled the trigger on him. He shuddered when the bullets hit him, but the damage that they were causing was negligible. When she lost a grip on her hold of him he teleported further away on the meteor and the group on the ground followed him swiftly, Dave turning to face her for a split second before he charged off with the others.

She followed them, and saw Noir again as she closed in. This time the others were ready for Jade's interference and when she froze him again they all unleashed their most powerful attacks. A few Daves appeared throughout the onslaught and surrounded Noir, laying down relatively decent damage. She pulled the trigger on her rifle a few times but focused mainly on the manipulation of Noir, who would easily, after a short time, pull away from her hold to begin teleporting and laying bloody and barely non-lethal wounds on her allies. She occasionally lost track of Dave as he time traveled, but at the brief moments where there was only one of him on the field she would glance at him and count the bloody rips in his clothes.

She wanted to tell him to back off, to stop attacking Bec so haphazardly, and once or twice she teleported him out of the way of a nearly lethal attack. She started alternating her interference from keeping Noir from teleporting and pulling her allies out of the way of attacks when her hold had weakened. Once again, she turned her attention to Dave and for a moment she held her gaze to him, but suddenly something caught her throat and left her momentarily stunned. And then she felt it; a searing, throbbing pain. It blinded her and then she was falling, the distant sound of voices shouting, and eventually silence.

Everything was void.

Until it wasn't anymore.

* * *

**Ooooh finally some plot progression. I am rubbish with fight scenes, but I hope this is alright. Is it a problem that these chapters are short? I don't know. I need to separate these parts of the story, but I think the next chapter will be longer. ****Hope you all are enjoying it so far, I hope that the pace I am posting this isn't a problem. If I don't finish this fast, it might not get finished. We can't have that.**

**-CS**


	4. Chapter 4

She woke to humming, a low, beautiful song that vibrated against her skin. There was pressure against her face and she felt the touch of a shallow breath and realized it was someone pressed against her. She lifted her hands tentatively and touched the form above her lightly. The figure shuddered violently and jerked slightly away from her touch, and with the distance now between them she could see his face clearly. She wordlessly closed the distance between her hands and his face and touched the not yet fully dried tears on his cheeks. "You're crying." He didn't respond, but she could see his heart beating in his throat and it made her insides tangle with a sudden anxiety. "Dave, what's wrong?" she moved to touch his face again but he jerked away and sat bolt upright.

"Jade!"

She turned quickly toward the half excited, half tearful exclamation of her brother in time to see him and Rose rushing to her side. Rose was the first to wrap her arms around her, and John swiftly followed, engulfing both of the girls into a hug. "W-what's going on?" she asked, now genuinely confused.

"We thought we had lost you. You died and we did not know if you would come back. Dave was… where is Dave?" Rose lifted her head from the crook of Jade's now tear-soaked neck and looked around for her brother. He was nowhere to be found. Suddenly they were bull-rushed by another group of familiar faces. Terezi overwhelmed Jade in a tight hug, laughing madly all the while, and Karkat stared down at her with a scowl that wouldn't fool anyone who knew him well enough.

"Be more fucking careful, Harley. Jegus." Jade pulled away from Terezi's hug to jump up and wrap her arms around him in a tight hug.

"It's sweet that you care." He blushed a bright crimson and gently, but firmly, pushed her off of him. Jade giggled and bounced slightly on the balls of her feet. After a few moments of passing touches from her other companions and words of relief, John walked up to her and grabbed her gently by the hand. She looked at him curiously, and he motioned to her to follow him.

"I need to talk to my sister." Rose nodded and turned back to the trolls. Once the two were far enough away from the group, John wrapped his arms around his sister again. "I was so scared. Like… like Liv Tyler at the end of Armageddon, all wonderin' if Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck will make it off the meteor alive. That kind of really fucking scared."

"Hey, hey. I'm sorry… I didn't mean to cause such a commotion." John gave her a tight squeeze and released her from the hug.

"Do you remember anything?"

"I… really don't know… I was so focused on the state of the battlefield I must have been caught by surprise." She giggled nervously. "I remember pain… really sudden. I don't remember… or I never saw where it came from." She touched the now closed wound on her neck and her happy demeanor faltered slightly. "I'm sorry I wish I could give you a straight answer."

"It's okay… it really doesn't matter. Jack retreated. He kind of freaked out when you fell. Well, we all did. Dave was the first to…" John hesitated to finish the sentence.

"Dave. Where is he?"

John looked around, a worried expression suddenly on his face, "I don't know."

"Is he okay?"

"I… yeah, definitely. He's Dave, he's like the chilliest bro ever to be totally fucking chill. He's fine." Jade did not really hear any conviction in John's assertion, but she brushed it off and smiled.

"Haha. Yeah!" John ruffled her hair and jokingly poked at her dog ears as they headed back to the group.

* * *

Terezi could not see him, but she could smell Dave. She had spent enough time with him that she knew his scent as well as her own, and so she followed it. Karkat, whose hand had been in hers, slipped away, and she felt his gaze on her as she turned from him. For once, he did not protest, understanding as he watched while she slunk into the bowels of the meteor to find her friend. Dave's scent was different than usual; it was intermingled with the candy apple smell of human blood and the salt of tears and sweat. The muscles in her stomach clenched as she turned into a dark corridor and found Dave standing, face away from hers. If she had been looking with her eyes, she might have missed him in the darkness.

He breathed, soft and shallow, and she could sense his face was impassive as always. He was staring at his blood covered hands, though, and it reminded her of a long time ago when he had encountered his own dead body in his apartment, his own blood on his hands transfixing him into silence. His calm was a heavy veil, not the effortless one he usually held. Softly, Terezi said, "Jade's fine." She stared in his direction, blank red eyes set in the direction of his face, unseeing but thoughtful and intense.

"Yeah, yeah. No sweat. Kinda flipped my shit back there but she's fuckin' tough. Witch of Space and all. Shouldn't have worried, it's not like much can really kill us, right? Fuckin' ridiculous." His voice cracked as he continued. "F-fucking stupid of me, right? Forgetting and all. Stupid fucking game." He had balled his right hand into a fist and pressed it against his forehead. Terezi tipped her head to the side as he spoke, her expression unchanging. "Anyway thanks for comin' by but I'm fine, I'm not some helpless wriggler who needs taking care of. I'm a grown fucking man." Terezi smirked at his use of troll slang; it was a habit he had gotten into over the past three years.

"Dave, don't think I can't smell you losing your calm even now. It's wafting off you in waves and basically slapping me in the face here."

"Get you're freaky fucking nose out of here, TZ, Karkat's probably flipping his jealous lid right off the fucking candy apple jam jar right now. I do not doubt it. He still thinks I've got it in my head to steal you away."

"I don't think he does, Dave." She said it awkwardly, as if she was straining to say something completely different with the words, and as his crimson eyes met her unseeing ones through his shades and the dark of the corridor, he knew what she wouldn't say.

"It's that obvious?" he half laughed, a dry humorless laugh.

She did not answer him; instead she moved silently toward him and reached to put her hand up to his face. A little of his composure slipped and he shuddered at her touch. "I've never been so fucking scared." He whispered into her hand. He averted his eyes pointlessly. She knew him too well, and in spite of his engrained desire to shut himself off to others, he trusted her too much; revealed too much. After a moment, she moved her hand away from his face and brought the thumb and forefinger of both her hands to make the shape of a diamond and pressed it against his chest. She went up on her toes, weight against him and placed a tender kiss on his forehead. He leaned down into it instinctively, eased momentarily by the familiarity of her closeness. Their foreheads pressed together and Dave wound his long, pale fingers through her jet black hair, aching for a calm he did not feel.

"Stay cool, cool kid" she whispered, her breath buzzing slightly against his skin, and he let out a long shuddering breath that he felt he had been holding in for hours.

* * *

Despite John's reassurance that Dave was fine, Jade could not help herself and began pacing around the meteor searching for him. Her feet made a light patter on the hard ground, but aside from that she was soundless. She rubbed her neck absently, cringing involuntarily when it would sting more than she was expecting. For a while she simply wandered, barely paying any attention to her surroundings at all and lost in her own head.

She thought of the look on Dave's face when she touched him, the way he had been pressed against her. She wondered how long he had been by her side after she had fallen. She was surprised, and at the thought she felt the tiny flutter in her chest of some emotion she couldn't seem to describe. All she knew is she wanted to see him. Make sure he was alright. Last she had seen he had taken a bit of a beating. Anxiety rose in her and she started walking faster, head jerking back and forth searching for him in the dim light. When she began to feel as though she had just been walking in circles, she heard the low murmur of a voice down the hall, and she followed it quietly.

She found them quickly, and it was hard to tell if they were embracing or what but the sight of it sent her heart beating heavily in her throat. Suddenly her mouth was full of cobwebs and the words would not come to her. Terezi had tensed up noticeably at her arrival and she swiftly turned to face her, Dave's fingers pulling back from her messy hair. She tried to smile but the thrumming of her own heart in her ears was loud and distracting and she could not figure out how to move her muscles anymore. After a moment she felt Terezi brushing past her and Dave, well, Dave just stood there. Still as stone.

"Hey." She almost jumped at the sound of her own voice.

"Hey."

* * *

**I can't even begin to explain home much I love writing TereziDave. I got so into it. I kind of wish I had made that scene longer but I always think I'm dragging the narrative. Thanks for all the positive feedback so far! I feel like I should really slow down on the updates so I can reel in more readers(I'm such a whore), also I've been about 3 chapters ahead of myself until now, and so I'll probably delay a bit till I have a good cushion. Anyway, thanks again. Love feedback.**

**-CS**


	5. Chapter 5

They stared at each other for what felt like a long time. Dave was frozen to the spot, unable to think of anything to say. Actually, he had a million things he wanted to say, but he suddenly was afraid to say any of them. At the sight of the pink, bruised scar on Jade's neck that had been only 20 minutes before a bleeding gash, he felt his body threatening to convulse again. He wanted, more than anything, to close the space between them and brush his hand against her throat, confirming for himself what he had been too reticent to accept; she was alive, and here in front of him. He suddenly ached at the thought, and if it had not been for the fear that gripped him at that moment he would have done it. _Coward_. He cursed himself.

She was a mixture of emotion, her eyes panning over his body; dried blood was clinging to his shirt where he had been cut. Shallow cuts, but there were so many of them and she wanted to tend to them regardless. Her eyes moved down his arms and lingered on the blood caked on his hands, and as she moved her gaze back up she registered the blood on his face, smeared and dried, cracking at tension points. There were tear tracks breaking through the mess on his cheeks. There was so much blood on him.

Too much.

She felt the tears stinging her eyes and she quickly turned her face away from him. Did he try to revive her? He had to have known it was impossible. She did not have a Dream self anymore. It was hard for her to imagine how he could have forgotten that. It did not make sense. Dave Strider always kept his cool. Always. She shook away the thought and looked back at him.

He had barely moved a muscle, and the silence between them was starting to scare her. She thought back to the way she had found him and Terezi, and she furrowed her brow at the memory of how intimate their closeness had seemed. Did it really surprise her? They had always been good friends, and she knew he had spent a lot of time talking to her back when they first started the game. He had spent three years in her company, how could she think he would want to wait for her? Or that he even felt that way to begin with? He probably barely remembered a thing about her. Three years is such a long, long time to be apart. She tried to push away the disappointment that welled up in her and instead tried to give him a smile.

If her expressions had not been so worrying, he would have laughed. She seemed to be running headlong through a mess of different feelings, not being able to settle on a single one. At one point she had looked ready to cry, and his heart had clenched in his chest at his sudden desire to comfort her. Now, though, she was smiling. It was the saddest, most forced smile he had ever seen, and he had no clue what he was supposed to do. She giggled lightly, and it only served to punctuate the strain of her cheerful demeanor. Why was she so upset? And then he realized, with a pang of guilt and embarrassment, that he was still covered in her blood. He must look completely terrible. He shoved his hands into his pockets and fell into a nonchalant lean against the wall and tried his best to smile back at her.

"You're hurt." She finally spoke, and her voice was loud as it echoed against the walls of the empty corridor.

"What, these? I'm fine, just some fuckin' scratches. I'm golden." He shrugged as nonchalantly as he could manage, and he was suddenly aware of the wounds littering his arms and chest. He winced almost imperceptibly, but he quickly realized that he had not covered it nearly well enough and she quickly approached him and placed her hand tentatively on his shoulder. Up until that point he had been so hyper focused on her that he had not felt any of the pain, but the feeling suddenly bull-rushed him and he slumped slightly, putting more of his weight on the wall than he had intended. "Seriously, Harley, I'm fine." She looked up at him, half worried, half mad, and he smiled slightly at that. She was completely transparent sometimes, and there was something terribly comforting about it. She started moving her hands along his chest, lightly touching his injuries, and he barely suppressed his body's shivering at her touch. He wanted to take her hand in his so badly, press it up to his face to remind him she was real, but he was afraid she would pull away so he kept still, staring at her through his dark shades. She was so completely open, but he had no idea what she was thinking at that moment and it was driving him slightly mad.

Suddenly to his surprise she pressed on one of his worse cuts and he winced and shuddered with a sudden intake of breath. Without much thought, more of an impulse reaction than actually meaning to, his hand rose and wrapped around her wrist, a firm but gentle grip that kept her hand an inch away from his injured chest. The look on her face was apologetic, and unless he was mistaken, slightly terrified. Her mouth dropped open as if to say something, but instead she quickly turned away from him and tried to walk away, her wrist slipping from his grip. In a sudden rush of panic he grasped her wrist tighter and she stopped trying to move away, still facing in the opposite direction. He stared into the back of her head with such intensity as he tried to communicate to her what he was too scared to say. _I'm sorry. Don't go._ Instead he simply said, "Ok."

"Okay what?" she responded, voice a little quieter than he had expected.

"I'll get patched up. Just don't worry so much, yeah?"

"Yeah." She laughed, and it didn't sound _completely _forced this time. She took a deep breath, as if she was bracing herself for something, and then turned back toward him and looked him full in the face. "Why did you run off?"

His voice caught in his throat and he froze, staring at her in an inexpressive and carefully controlled panic. "I—" he started, but he paused and then there was another voice.

"Dave! Jade! I need you to come out here; I think John may have entirely lost it." It was the sound of Rose's voice echoing through the halls, and Dave let Jade's wrist slip from his hand as he started toward the exit.

"What the fuck is happening now?" As he spoke, Rose rounded a corner and joined the two, now standing a good few feet from each other.

"He found out about Vriska and it seems as though he might be a slight bit angry that we all kept it from him for so long. Well, by 'we' I mean to say Karkat, and by a 'slight bit angry' I mean he has got him up against a wall."

Jade was surprised to hear Dave snort with laughter at that. "Come on, let's go pull Egderp off him before Karkat starts waxing caliginous and this little reunion gets a million fucking times more awkward." Despite her worry for her brother, she had to smile at the thought of Karkat's possible misinterpretation of regular human animosity. She still felt a tingle in her wrist where Dave's hand had been only moments before. She had been transitorily scared that he was legitimately angry with her, but despite it she also could not help the racing of her heart when his hand had closed around her wrist, and then the way it had tightened when she had attempted to turn and walk away from him. It made her shiver slightly to recall it. She had not really wanted to hurt him, but the state of his body from the fight was bothering her and she wanted him to admit that it was hurting him and that he needed to get himself patched up.

The three of them walked toward the exit at a brisk pace, and as they got nearer they could hear shouting. When they finally saw John, he had Karkat backed up against the side of the ship and there was a look on his face that was so completely not John that it put them all on edge to get closer to the two. Strangely, Karkat was not angry, but was instead staring back at John with a look of intense pain. Terezi was standing back away from the scene, and the look on her face was expressionless. The whole thing was almost surreal.

"I'm sorry, John, I didn't have _choice_. You couldn't afford to find out back then; you had too much to do." Karkat's voice was strangely quiet, but pleading.

"Oh, so you were worried about my wellbeing? Didn't think I could handle it? I went the past three years thinking she was alive and well. I – I would have given her more than a second thought if I had known. I know she was fucking psychotic but you could have at least given a fucking thought to the idea that I _might_ want to, you know, grieve?"

"I knew how you felt about her, how she felt about you. I felt horrible when I read that conversation, and I really did not want to… I didn't want to do that to you."

"Selfish." He spat it at him like the word was a weapon, and Karkat took it that way, seeming to feel a physical pain at the sound of it. He backed into the wall, trying to physically flatten himself against it, and he could go no further.

"I'm sorry, I'm fucking horrible okay? I know it, don't think I don't. Nobody knows it more than I do. When it comes to being a complete fucking screw up, Karkat Vantas is SIMPLY the best there fucking is." John stared at him, and it was like the anger was receding and his muscles seemed to relax. His expression changed to one of exhaustion and he dropped his arms that had until that point been trapping Karkat on either side. Karkat looked up to John, and he gave him a sincerely apologetic look.

John sighed and put his hand over his eyes. "No you're not. Don't be a drama queen." Karkat exhaled loudly and put his hand on John's shoulder. John dropped the hand covering his eyes and placed it on Karkat's own arm. Just like that, it was over, and everything was calm again. Karkat gave a final nod to John and turned toward Terezi who stood impassive and unreadable. He walked to her and wordlessly wrapped his arms around her shoulders, one hand running absently over her hair. She returned the hug, gripping the slack of his black shirt with her thin hands and pressing her face into his chest.

Karkat shooshed her quietly, and she pulled back just enough so that he could look her full in the face. "Don't start shoosh-papping me Karkat Vantas, I'm fine." In truth, the drudging up of the memory of Vriska was bothering her more than she would say, and Karkat knew it, but he did not try to continue. He simply pulled her face to his and kissed her lightly beneath her eyes and she smiled at the tenderness in the gesture. "Thanks, idiot."

"Anytime."

Jade walked toward her brother, and he looked at her with a complicated expression. The entire exchange had seemed to have a weird effect on everyone, and there was barely anyone speaking besides Karkat and Terezi in hushed tones. She remembered, with a pang of guilt, that she had kept this information from him as readily as Karkat had, and she was fairly sure he knew it, but he smiled at her all the same. "I'm sorry" she said simply, and he laughed at that.

"It's fine, I'm fine. I feel bad for Karkat; I didn't mean to hurt him as much I did. Dear sweet Troll Jegus, today has been such an emotional clusterfuck. Let's just go play that awesome Ghostbusters game or somethin'."

"John, I am not playing that with you. That game is terrible." He laughed at this and reached his hands out to playfully pet her dog ears.

"No, Jade. It is awesome. Dave'll play with me, right? Best bro?" He looked over to Dave who was standing to the back of Jade.

Dave looked at the two of them as if he had until that very moment been somewhere far away. "Fuck nah. I would kick your lame ass anyway Egderp. You have no hope of defeating me." He was feeling slightly light headed, and the pain that he had recently been made aware just a few minutes ago was starting to wear on him. It wasn't the severity of the wounds, just the sheer volume of them. He tried to push it down. It was not a big deal and he would not let it become one. He had gone through worse in strife's with his bro back before this stupid game ever even started. Still, he felt the need to maybe sit the fuck down.

"I beat Davesprite into the ground; don't think I couldn't do the same to you." Jade looked straight up at Dave and shook her head fervently, an exasperated-looking smile plastered on her face.

"Psh! Yeah. Yeah okay man, whatever you say." He shot Jade a smirk and as she beamed back up at him his heart fluttered is his chest. It was good to see her really smile again. His body rocked with another wave of numb pain and exhaustion, and he shook it off as best he could. Still sold on the idea of taking a seat, he turned to walk off back into the lab. At the movement he felt a sudden intense wave of dizziness. _Shit._ He thought, right before he hit the ground.


	6. Chapter 6

He only blacked out for around thirty seconds, but it took a lot longer for him to be able to feel his limbs again. There were figures surrounding him, and he was having trouble understanding what any of them were saying. His mind was a haze and all he could focus on were his failing efforts to push himself back on his feet. Suddenly, he felt two hands on either side of his shoulders and they kept his body steady. After what felt like hours of spinning he was able to focus his eyes ahead of him for a moment. The first thing he saw was her bright green eyes and the concerned look that creased in the space between her dark eyebrows. Her eyes looked bloodshot. Was she crying? He tried to lift his arm to reach out to her but he miscalculated and just wound up falling forward onto it, feeling the ground beneath his hand. "Please. Don't be sad." He slurred it out, the words felt heavy on his tongue and he stared blankly for a few moments before it hit him that he had said it out loud. He threw his hand forward clumsily to cover his face and he shuddered at the pain that shot through his body when he did so.

"Dave, seriously stop moving. Just sit there. Please." He was not completely sure, but it sounded like Rose's voice coming from somewhere to the back of him. His vision kept going out of focus no matter how hard he tried to steady himself. He tried to listen to her, though, and he clutched at the ground like a lifeline and tensed his muscles to keep himself steady, but the dizziness made him feel like he was lolling around like a rag doll. He shut his eyes tight to try and stop himself from feeling as if he were about to topple over, and it helped a little. Not nearly enough, though. He wanted to grab onto someone, but he kept his fists hard on the ground, focusing as severely as he could. He started humming, trying to concentrate on something else besides the vertigo; soothing music and a thrumming beat that he could desperately try to hold onto.

"Just lay him down; he can't keep himself steady like this." A boy's voice now. Maybe John? He didn't know. It was hard to think. He felt his body moving, but with his head spinning so much he was not sure what direction he was moving in until he felt the ground beneath him. He tried to take deep, calming breaths, but the dizziness persisted and he was starting to feel like the world would never be still again. Despite his best efforts he was completely freaked out by the whole experience. He clenched and unclenched his hand, wishing that someone would take it. He needed someone else to ground him. He kept falling and falling and it was enough to make him feel like he was going to vomit.

"Dave calm down. It'll pass, just calm down." Jade's voice was like an anchor, and then there was her hand on his head, running fingers through his hair gently and rhythmically. He felt her other small hand move to the other side of his face, and she was running her thumb gently against his cheek. He slowly moved his arm in what he thought was the general direction of his face, and after a few difficult moments of fruitless grasping, he finally found her hand. She took it in her own and pressed it against the ground, running her thumb over his palm and continuing to stroke his hair with her other hand.

If he stayed perfectly still and focused only on the touch of her hands, it wasn't so bad. Eventually, slowly, things started to slow down.

"Dave, do you think you can walk?" Jade's voice finally cut the silence.

"Yeah. Yeah, maybe." His voice was horse and his throat was terribly dry. "I'll try." He felt her arm loop around his back and tuck up under his other arm. He tried to put as little of his weight on her as he possibly could, but he overestimated the strength in his legs. He got halfway up before they gave way below him and he threw his arms out in front of him to catch himself if his body decided to completely give out on him. Jade bent over with him as he fell and caught him, steadying gracefully and pulling him tighter to her.

"Stop trying to be a big hero Dave and just let me help you, okay?" she sounded two parts worried and one part amused as they stood straight together, Dave having no choice but to consent without complaint to being dragged along like an invalid. He felt another rush of dizziness threatening to throw him again, and he stopped moving, eyes closed and trying to keep steady.

"Just… one second." He mumbled out, and Jade stood patiently at his side for his dizziness to pass. "This is pretty much the least cool moment of my fuckin' life." He laughed weakly, gripping Jade's shoulder to communicate to her that it was okay to start moving again.

"You're still the coolest, cool kid. Sooooo coooool." There was tenderness in her voice that made him want to hold her. He could not, at that moment, manage that, but he did smile. Wide and unironically. For her.

They made it without much trouble back into the lab and with his direction she was able to find the room where he had been staying. It was much the same as his room back in his old apartment, minus the plush rump puppets and shitty swords everywhere. He had managed to accumulate some turn tables and his arsenal of weapons had been taken out of his sylladex to lay all around the room, besides the ones he had currently equipped to his strife deck. There were sketches all over the walls and on sheets of paper surrounding a laptop that sat on something resembling a desk.

"I like it. It's very… you."

"That's definitely something that a thing can be." Dave retorted, with a grin. She would have pushed him if she had not known that it would result in him genuinely falling over. She was acutely aware of his hand around her waist, his hand stroking her side absently. She was not even sure that he was completely aware that he was doing it, but she had no desire to have it end any sooner than it had to. It sent a pleasant shiver through her every time he brushed her, soft and gentle. Her heart lurched with a longing she had to attempt to push down, reminding herself of what she had seen earlier. He cared for her, she knew that much, but she could not wholly convince herself to believe it could ever be anything more, whatever she might want.

She led him to the bed (or, really, the only thing in the room that looked fit for a person to conceivably lie down on) and she let him wrap his arms around her neck as she lowered him down. After he was comfortably settled, she tried to pull away from him, but he would not take his arms from around her. Her heart started to beat very fast and hard, and her face burned as she stared at his impassive face. Instead of letting go, he pulled her close so quickly that she almost fell onto him. She managed to keep herself partially elevated on her elbows which pressed to either side of his lanky frame. One arm curled all the way around her back, his hand resting easily on the side of her stomach in a way that made her feel infinitely smaller than him. His other hand pressed against the back of her head, fingers tangling in her long, messy hair, stroking it gently. She was not sure what to do with her own arms, and so she rested them tentatively near his shoulders, hands hovering around him without ever making contact.

She was breathing in quick shallow pants, and her heart was thrumming in her ears. Heat was building deep in her stomach, her legs twitching imperceptibly at the feeling of his steady breath against her throat. He did not say a word, and he barely shuddered as he held her gently in his arms. She lost herself in it, allowing her face to press against his soft, blonde hair, her fingertips slightly grazing the rips in his sleeves. After a few moments of silent holding, she remembered with a pang the reason they had come here, and she braced herself to pull away from him.

"I really need to clean these cuts. You can't stay like this."

"Just wait." His voice was soft, and she was not sure, but there might have been a slight tremble beneath the words. She might not have even noticed he was crying if it had not been for his quick intake of breath and the sudden tremble that accompanied it. The hand he had tangled in her hair was gripping her almost desperately. She pulled herself away from him, and he allowed her to get far enough away from him to see his face clearly. There were tears marring his already horribly mussed up face, and with the light as bright as it was and the closeness of her face to his, she could see the red of his eyes boring straight through his dark shades into her own. They were wide and expressive while the rest of his face was set in the empty gaze she was familiar with. She felt the sudden urge to remove the shades and get a better look at those eyes, but as she lifted her hand to take them from his face, he dropped his arms away from her and raised one hand to block her from reaching them.

He could not let her take them off. His insides clenched as he thought of how fervently he did not want her to see him without his glasses. Not now. They would be wide, and red rimmed. They would give away everything, and he could not, would not let it happen. She tensed visibly and pushed herself up and away from him. He almost reached up to pull her back to him. He wanted her to stay. Unfortunately another wave of dizziness gripped him as his moved to follow her and he froze in his place, a twinge of pain emanating from the cuts on his body. She was looking away from him now, and he was suddenly terrified that she would be angry with him.

"Jade." He started, but she would not let him finish.

"I have to go find some bandages! Don't move!" he sighed as she ran out of the room, head pressing back on the pile of soft blankets he was using as pillows. He lay there with his eyes shut, mindlessly drumming a beat with his fingers on his knees.

It was so easy.

Drifting off.

* * *

**Guys, vertigo is terrible. I did not even have it as bad as I wrote for Dave, and it was still awful. Hopefully that was a pretty apt description of that sort of experience.  
Man, does anyone else want them to just kiss already? Hehe.**

**I keep saying to myself that I'm gunna stop updating so damn fast, but... I'm writing it fast. So. Here we are. Another update tomorrow. And then I don't know. Probably another one... after that...**

**I should have mentioned this earlier, but there will be NSFW chapters in the future, and this will probably change to Mature. I don't know how soon that's going to occur, though. I'm trying pretty hard to make this have some semblance of a plot. Alpha kids and whatnot. I guess this turned into a slight AU, but I feel like it was a little inevitable. I don't really know what actually quantifies something as AU, besides from the obvious instances. Isn't most fanfiction just some form of AU? I guess this is my version of events after the 3 year gap in the comic. **

**Anyway, I'm rambling. Sorry.**

**My genuine thanks to all my readers, especially those who leave such lovely comments. Really and truly.**

**-CS **


	7. Chapter 7

Jade pressed herself up against the door of Dave's room. She was breathing fast and trying hard to push down the tears that were stinging at her eyes. _Calm down, calm down. It's fine. Everything is fine._ She tried to reason with herself. She was the inconsolable, emotionally fragile dream self and the reasonable part of her was growing steadily angrier with her own emotional irrationality. She laughed at that, and momentarily considered finding Karkat so he could yell some sense into her. She resolved herself to focus on tending to Dave's injuries and pushing aside her selfish desires and disappointments.

She made her way tentatively through the maze of a lab that her friends had turned into a home. She realized that she had absolutely no idea where anything was and she was going to get herself lost. Almost as an answer to the anxiety, Terezi rounded the corner to face her. The red glasses and bright shine of her huge grin in the dark tipped Jade off to her immediately, and she let out a sigh that was both exasperation and also relief. "Terezi!" she smiled as wide as she could manage and the gray face of the girl in front of her tipped gently to the side in response. "I can't find my way around here at all. I need to find something to dress Dave's cuts. Can you…" and she faltered as Terezi held up a bowl of steaming water in one hand and a mess of dressings, rags, and a tube of something she did not recognize in the other.

"Calm down." Terezi told her, cackling. "I can smell your human fear pretty easily. Come on, Jade, carry these." Without waiting for a response she placed everything but the bowl of water into Jade's upturned palms and used her new free hand to turn Jade gently back in the direction she had come from. After a few moments of silence as they made their way back to Dave's room, Terezi spoke again. "I know you don't know me well, Jade, but I'm not going to hurt you or anything."

"I didn't think that." Jade responded truthfully.

"What, then?" Jade stared forward, unwilling to look her straight in the face, and she laughed nervously. Finally realizing that she wasn't going to answer, Terezi placed her hand on Jade's shoulder comfortingly and let her keep her secrets.

"I'm glad Dave had you around. I can see how much he cares for you." Jade finally said stopping in front of Dave's closed door to look the troll girl in the eyes. She wasn't sure if it was necessary, but she felt it was the right thing to do regardless.

"He cares about you, too." She said with a wild smile as she brushed past Jade to open the door and slope inside. Jade made up her mind in that moment that she really liked Terezi Pyrope, despite the way her heart sank at the thought of how Dave might feel about her. She smirked happily at that and followed her into the room.

Terezi was setting the bowl of warm water on the ground near where Dave was lying, and she noticed with a smile that his breaths were slow and shallow, indicating that he had fallen asleep. She looked at Terezi for a moment and, though the troll girl did not look back at her, she knew that she was waiting for her to say something. With an intake of breath she finally spoke. "Will you help me get his shirt off, we need to clean his injuries."

Terezi smiled wide when she sensed the blush creeping up Jade's cheeks. In easy compliance, she moved to the right side of Dave and motioned to Jade to mirror her on his left. Together they gently lifted him forward and his glasses went slightly askew on his face when his head rolled limply. Terezi responded quickly, pushing them back up the bridge of his nose with one long, spindly gray finger.

Together they pulled his shirt off, and it was worse than Jade had expected. It was a small wonder that he had been able to ignore it for as long as he had. There were cuts literally everywhere on him, and there was a patch of dried blood and the beginnings of bruises surrounding each one. Terezi threw his nearly ruined God Tier top onto the floor and slowly helped Jade lower him back onto the blankets. She noticed as they moved that there were small red marks marring the blankets beneath him. She frowned slightly as she surveyed him, worry showing freely on her face. Despite his condition, she found herself unable to ignore how beautiful he was. His pale skin was smooth and there were lean cords of muscle in his arms, chest and stomach.

She felt ashamed and a blush rose to her cheeks again before she tried to push the thoughts away and focus on the task at hand. Terezi was already at work, pressing a rag now soaked with warm water against his face with a tenderness that made her feel as though she was intruding on an intimate moment. Terezi, seeming to respond to her apprehension, faced in her direction and held out the rag she had been using to clean his face. "You take over, Jade. I will take care of his arms." She was not sure why she was handing over this particular task to her, but she did not complain and simply took the rag from her hands, slightly red from blood already.

Jade sat herself up against him on the bed and touched the side of his face with her left hand while the right one went to work. Slowly, gently, she pressed the rag against his flushed cheek and the mess began to wash away, leaving the rag dark and stained. There was a tiny cut below his left eye, and she took care not to press it too hard when she wiped away the grime surrounding it. She stared at him while she worked, taken aback by how young he seemed as he slept. Far younger than he had looked when she had left the room. Almost helpless, even, though she knew he was not. His features were soft in a way they rarely were when he was awake, and she was transfixed by it. Her fingers gently caressed his cheek as she continued to press the rag against his face, and he seemed to lean slightly into it.

"You guy's are not going to believe this, but I had this cracked dream that the two of you were undressing me. Crazy, right? Man, I feel dirty just thinking about it." Jade was so startled that she nearly fell backward off of the bed. She had pulled her hands away from Dave's face to steady herself. To her complete surprise, he was laughing harder than she had ever seen Dave Strider laugh. His arms were folded up against his stomach and he just laughed and laughed. Both her and Terezi looked like they wanted to rip his head off, and that just made him laugh harder.

"Dave Strider I would hit you if I could!" Jade yelled, her face a bright red. Terezi was laughing now, and it just made her blush deepen.

"Aw, c'mon Harley. I was just kidding." Dave said, trying his hardest to stop laughing and sound concerned.

"Hmmph." She responded, crossing her arms tightly over her chest. Annoyed at how close she felt to tears from the embarrassment. The look on Dave's face broke her though and she finally smiled, and after a moment broke into laugher herself. His hand tangled into the hair on top of her head and he smirked at her. She blushed again, but for a completely different reason this time. He had, she thought, the most amazing smile, and she never wanted it to stop. He leaned back onto the blankets and his face straightened, but there was a trace of contentment still lingering there.

"Alright, I'm leaving. Jade, can you take care of this?" Terezi pushed the bowl of water toward her on the ground and started toward the door.

"You don't… want to stay, Terezi?"

She simply smiled at her, huge and slightly insane looking with her razor sharp teeth, and left the room, shutting the door silently behind her.

Jade looked at him, a little lost, but he was resting again, humming low under his breath and tapping his long fingers. She leaned over him and she heard him stop humming as he turned his head toward her. She decided to take the opportunity to tend to the wounds on his back. "Sit up and turn around, I am going to take care of your back before you pass out again." He stared at her for a moment before he sat up slowly to face her, face a little closer to hers than she anticipated. He leaned a little too heavily on his hands and she realized he would have trouble keeping himself upright. He began turning, but instead of letting him, she grabbed his shoulder and pulled him a little closer. "Lean on me, I can take care of it like this." He nodded silently and pressed his shoulders against hers and she felt his chin pressing lightly on her neck. She dipped a clean rag into the water and reached around behind him to begin cleaning the cuts on his back. She felt him breathing, rhythmic and soft. After a few minutes of silence, he finally spoke up for the first time since Terezi had gone.

"Why would you think she would want to stay?" he paused for a moment and continued, in a softer tone, "Is it bothering you to be alone with me, Harley?" _Are you angry with me? Do you want to get away from me?_ Jade shook her head. He seemed to relax a little at that, and put a little more of his weight on her, his lips brushing for a moment against her neck as he repositioned himself.

She shuddered, a heat building in her. He either did not notice, or didn't mind, and his fingers found their way to her arm, grazing the skin with an impossibly light touch. She wanted to touch him back, heart thrumming in excitement as she moved her free hand toward his now suspended one, frozen in anticipation. When her hand found his, when their fingers intertwined, it was like a bolt of lightning was running through her body, heating her and making her shudder. They did not simply hold hands; instead they were constantly moving, brushing fingertips, twining and untwining between themselves. It was incredible to her how such an insignificant touch could send her heart fluttering so fast and hard in her chest. He brushed his face against her neck and shoulder and she could feel his breath against her. The hand that was holding the rag had almost stopped moving, all of her attention on the feeling of him against her.

He could not seem to help himself with her pressed against him. His heart was beating fast in his chest, the wonderful anxious feeling of touching someone this way. No, not someone. Jade. Ridiculous, wonderful, beautiful Jade, so close to him now that he could smell the flowery scent of her hair. She was responding; she was not pulling away from him, and he was beaming, quietly glad she could not see his face. She was winding his hand with hers, moving and brushing as if she wanted to memorize every curve of it. He wanted to kiss her, he had almost pressed his lips against her neck, but he wanted to kiss her, really kiss her, first. He wanted to put everything he had been feeling, everything he had been hoping for in the past three years into the kiss. He wanted this but he did not act on it. Not then. Not yet. The sudden smell of blood reached him, and he opened his eyes to examine her. She had been covered in blood after she had fallen, and now it was dried onto her neck and face and clothes. He took his hand away from hers and placed it gently on the side of her face and pulled back to look at her more clearly. She was staring at him, eyes wide and searching.

"Give me that." He pointed to the rag in her hand, and she looked at it for a moment as if she had forgotten what it was that she was holding. She handed it to him silently and he reached over to put it back in the water, his hand never leaving the side of her face. After he had washed a bit of his own blood off the rag and rung it out as best he could with only one hand, he brought it back up to her face and started wiping the blood off. She closed her eyes and leaned into his hand, and he took the opportunity to stare at her, taking in her soft, long features, the blush of her cheeks. _You're beautiful. _ He wanted to say.

He finished getting the blood off her face and started down her neck, her head leaning to the side to allow him to reach it more easily. The pink, bruised scar on her neck made him frown and he avoided it carefully, not wanting to accidentally hurt her. Jade's breathing was soft and calm, her eyes still closed and he stroked the side of her face with his thumb absently. Her brow furrowed slightly at that, and he dropped the hand holding the rag and just looked at her. Her eyes opened when he did not put the rag back against her.

He pulled her slightly closer to him, though they were already a foot or so away from each other to begin with. He dropped the dirty rag and raised his hand to cup the other side of her face. "What's up?" he asked, his voice calm despite the worry that gripped him at her reaction. Abruptly, he felt a wave of dizziness grip him and he leaned forward, pressing his eyes shut to wait for it pass.

Jade was about to ask him about Terezi, ask him what was going on between them. Whatever was going on here felt amazing, but it was also confusing her, and she needed a straight answer. He was looking sick again, though, and all the questions she had wanted to ask died in her throat.

"Dave, lie back down."

"No. No, fuck that, I'm fine." He said, his light eyebrows creased and his eyes were still tight shut. His hands had moved from her face to her shoulders as he attempted to steady himself. "This is fuckin' ridiculous."

"_Lay down_." She pressed. He did as she asked, his eyes still tight shut, but the rest of his face was inexpressive.

She turned around to the laptop and wiggled the mouse. Dave had himself signed into Pesterchum and she logged him off, logging herself in instead. She was glad to see John was also online, and she opened a chat window to talk to him.

- gardenGnostic [GG] began pestering ectoBiologist [EB] at 19:47 -

GG: joooooohn!

EB: jade! how is my best bro?

GG: not doing very well :( I need you to help me out here john

GG: it is a matter of

GG: significant importance!

EB: gosh, jade, I am feeling slightly inadequate at the implied gravity of the situation. what is it that you need me to do?

GG: you need to bring in the big guns, john.

GG: bring in

GG: the apple juice!

EB: :O!

GG: i know.

EB: hehe.

EB: :B

- gardenGnostic [GG] ceased pestering ectoBiologist [EB] at 19:49 -

Dave had made his way over to her as she was turned and he was now staring over her shoulder at the computer screen, bracing himself against her back. "You did not just tell John to bring me apple juice, Harley. Please tell me you did not just tell him to do that. Please tell me, I need to hear it coming out of that grinning mouth of yours that you did not just tell fucking John Egbert to get me, Dave Motherfucking Strider, any gog damn apple juice."

She just smiled.

* * *

**In which teenagers clean each other instead of totally making out.  
****Trolololololo.**

**Strangely proud of that pesterlog.**

**-CS**


	8. Chapter 8

"You have blood loss, probably you're dehydrated too, just drink it you horse's ass!" John was near straddling Dave on the bed, holding the bottle of apple juice in front of his face. "Drink it, Dave. You have to drink it. "

"Fuck no I do not, I wouldn't trust you with my apple juice for a hundred million boonbonds, which as it turns out I already have."

"Dave, your imaginary game wealth does not concern me. Drink it."

"No."

"Dave."

"John." he backed up slightly as John leaned forward, pressing the juice against his face and looking relentlessly determined. "Harley, I thought we were bros. Hella tight and whatnot. You're just sitting there giggling at me like it's your fuckin' birthday and your gift is one very uncomfortable Dave Strider."

"Are there lots of people at my party, Dave?"

"You fucking know it, pretty much everyone showed up to bask in the glow of my terrible humiliation. The trolls are all wearing party hats, the salamanders and nakkadiles are having a sock-hop on the dance floor. Frogs motherfuckin' as far as the eye can see. That's not the fuckin' point, though."

"Daaaaave! Come on you have to drink it. I thought you liked apple juice!"

Dave shot his hands forward to keep John and the beverage at a distance, and he turned toward Jade, still carefully controlling his expression despite the small battle that was taking place. "I do. I would go as far to say that I motherfucking love me some apple juice, but I am not letting Egderp, the self-proclaimed Sassachre-protégé and Little Monsters fanatic, which I will never fucking understand, hand me apple juice and drink it willingly. Not this guy. Not gunna fuckin' happen."

"Daaaave." Jade pleaded, giggling uncontrollably on the floor as she watched the struggle continue. John should have been able to easily overpower Dave, but Jade suspected he was holding back, not wanting to allow him to overtire himself. Not after he had just gotten over another dizzy spell.

"This is completely unwarranted mistrust. I'm not gunna lie, I'll probably be an inconsolable mess because of this." Dave kept his face unreadable and stared back at him, incompliant. He was so focused on John that he did not even realize that Jade had come over to them until he felt her arms around his waist and her face against his shoulder. He had to suppress his smile, he and John where still engaged in their dispute and he would not let his poker face slip. Still, he found her hand and entwined his fingers with hers while his other hand still struggled to keep John separated from him. "What's this now, Strider?" John asked, smiling down at their hands pressed against Dave's stomach.

Dave just stared at him and his face was impressively non-expressive. He moved his thumb gently across the top of Jade's hand as if to challenge John to say something else about it, making it clear that he was not going to let go. Behind him, Jade pressed her face into his shoulder, trying to hide the huge smile on her face. John seemed to understand the message, and didn't try to press him further.

"Dave, please drink it. For me?" Jade said sweetly, mouth muffled against his bare skin.

Dave let out an audible sigh and took his hand off of John, motioning to him to hand over the drink. He drank the whole bottle almost at once, not realizing until that moment how much he had needed it. She squeezed him gently, a wordless thank you, and pulled herself away. His loosened his grip apprehensively, not truly letting go until he felt her fingertips slip away. She sat up next to him, allowing him to fall back onto the blankets and took his left arm to situate it on her lap. She began dressing the cuts wordlessly while Dave's hand lightly pressed against the side her leg.

John was sitting cross-legged at the end of the bed and the two boys spoke easily, reminiscing, joking, and making fun of each other in turns. It was if the two had never been apart. Despite their disparate personalities, they were at ease in each other's presence, and it made Jade feel more comfortable than she had felt all day. Things finally felt normal, as normal as it could get in this crazy game, and she smiled as she worked, lightly spreading ointment over his arms and bandaging them up neatly. The three of them were soon engrossed in conversation, Dave explaining spiritedly of the numerous fights he had gotten into with Karkat, flourishing the recaps with clever metaphors and a straight face that made the ridiculous things he said so much more amusing. John and Jade took turns detailing the events on their end, John making constant reference to her Dog-like tendancies and her rivalry with Jaspersprite while Jade poked fun at his horrible taste in video games and generally every other media. Dave always backed her up when she talked about John's tastes, and together they ganged up on him, leading eventually to the group of them breaking down into laughter as John attempted to act out the final scene to Con Air with Jade as his tentative but adoring daughter and Dave as his loving wife.

Jade eventually finished dressing Dave's wounds, and plopped herself down on the floor next to the bed, back against it while Dave ran his fingers through her hair. Rose eventually joined them and Jade offered her a seat next to her. Rose and Dave were like a two-man act as they spat complex metaphors and clever backtalk at each other, mirroring ironic humor with sarcastic verbosity. Jade and John laughed as the two of them fought a verbal battle, eventually ending when Rose attempted to get Dave to talk about his deep-seated insecurities and his psychologically fascinating discomfort with puppets. They talked and laughed for hours until they were all exhausted and ready to get some sleep. Dave, much to the amusement of everyone, had already passed out as John and Rose got up to leave. John playfully petted Jade's dog ears and ruffled her hair before he slipped out of the room, telling the girls goodnight with a smile and a wave. Rose lingered.

"Jade, I am perfectly willing to share my bed with you if you like. I was able to attain a fairly impressively sized one and it's quite comfortable." Rose smiled a bit as Jade looked back up at her, trying to decide what she would do.

"I think I'll sleep here tonight. Dave's got enough blankets in here for me to make a bed on the floor. I don't… you know… want him to be alone."

"Whatever you want, let me know if there is anything that you need. I will keep myself logged into Pesterchum tonight. I am a fairly light sleeper."

"Thanks Rose! You're the best!" She stood up and wrapped her arms around her and Rose responded back, less enthusiastically but with the same amount of affection. "It's so good to be together again!"

"I feel the same." Rose replied. Jade gave her a tight squeeze and let her go, watching after until the door to Dave's room shut and she was alone with him again. She collected as many blankets as she could find around his room and pushed a space clear on the floor to curl up. She managed to create a passible makeshift bed next to Dave's, and even though it was not the comfiest place she had ever slept she was too exhausted to notice or care. She drifted off easily, back pressed up against the side of Dave's bed, lulled to sleep by the sound of his calm breathing.

He slept dreamlessly for a long time, comfortable in the void and the silence, but eventually he manifested in his own memory, alert in a dream bubble, seemingly alone. For a long time it had been difficult to remember things when he receded into a memory, but with years of traveling through dream bubbles both awake and in sleep, he had a fairly good grasp of himself. It was difficult not to get caught up in this memory, though. He was hunched over her again, and she was bleeding horribly from a gash in her throat. The blood was pouring out of it and it made him sick. _No no no, this isn't real. This is a fucking dream. Get a hold of yourself, Strider. _He failed miserably. He felt the tears coming and he pressed his hands against the gash, trying to stem the flow of blood. It just kept coming, seeping between his fingers. It poured and poured, until he was soaked in it. He wanted to scream but he had no voice. He thrashed, trying to wake himself up, and after an eternity of aching to regain control of his muscles, he jolted himself awake.

His control was palpable, his face remaining impassive even as he struggled to catch his breath. He looked around him, and his room was dark and silent, the only light coming from the buttons on his laptop. Looking down he spotted her, and he calmed. _She stayed._ He had not expected it, but he was intensely grateful for it. His body was stiff, and it hurt him slightly to push himself up off the bed, but it quickly passed. He walked around to the other side of her and sat down, knees pulled halfway to his still bare chest. He stared at her for a long while. She was curled up on her side, her head resting on one arm, the other arm folded in front of her; hand open and palm up in front of her face. He wanted to take it in his, but he did not want to risk waking her up. Her dog ears twitched a bit and a frown creased between her eyes for a moment, and then relaxed again. Her glasses were folded up on his desk, and without them she looked different; a little older, a little more feminine, and significantly more vulnerable. He liked her glasses, though. He didn't want her to change anything.

He lay down on the floor to face her, his body curled up to mirror hers. Their faces were so close that he could feel her shallow breath touch his skin. He lifted a hand over her face and lingered for a moment before touching her cheek with his fingers. He drew invisible lines on her face with a gentle touch, occasionally tucking or pushing back a strand of hair that had fallen into her eyes. She smiled just a little in her sleep, and he smiled back at her. "I missed you." He said in a whisper so low he could barely hear himself. She did not respond, which was fine because he was not sure if he had wanted her to hear him. Her hand was terribly close to his face, and he placed a tentative kiss against her fingertips, looking up to make sure she had not woken up.

He closed his eyes, his hand still on her face, and he pressed his own face against her hand. After a while he started falling back to sleep like that, but just as the blackness was about to take him, something pulled him back.

"Dave?"

* * *

**This chapter and the next one were originally the same chapter, but I decided I wanted this one to be more of a cutesy fun reunion type chapter because my writing up until now has been (a tiny bit) angsty. I have trouble writing Rose, because I'm not particularly verbose and I found it difficult to try to get into the mind of someone who is. So, it's not that I don't love Rose, I just kind of avoid her because I don't want to mess it up.**

**Also, I started reading the Homestuck wiki to get a better grasp on their characterization. It's useful.**

**Thanks for all the comments! It really does make me want to write this more when I see views and comments. Sometimes I'm convinced this is crap, and then I see a comment and I feel better.**

**So, thanks.**

**-CS**


	9. Chapter 9

She stared at him for a moment, unsure if he was awake, but then he pulled back the hand that had been resting on her face and tipped his head up a bit to indicate that he was looking at her. "Dave, is everything okay?" He nodded at her almost imperceptibly.

"Couldn't sleep." He said simply. He pressed his now free hand against the back of hers tentatively, hoping that she would take it. He was not completely sure if she was just being kind and humoring him, or if she really felt something between them. He allowed her the power to take the initiative, hoping she would like she had earlier in the day. To his disappointment, she did not, and they just lay there, almost touching, but not quite. She stared at him, a questioning look. He hoped that she would speak soon or else he was going to have to think of something to say, and at that moment he was drawing a complete blank.

"Dave… can you be honest with me?" She asked it with such longing in her voice that it made him sad. He felt her brush a finger against the back of his hand, and he decided he would try his best to do what she asked. It was not that he was necessarily dishonest, not in a malicious way anyway, but he was playfully disingenuous and sarcastic, and he often used that to cover up how he really felt, or paint his feelings beneath a certain level of humor and irony. She was asking him not to.

"Sure." He sounded less sure of himself than he had meant to.

"You like Terezi, right?" The assumption in her question surprised him. He actually felt a smirk touch his lips as he answered.

"TZ? Yeah, yes I like her." He laughed, and before he could continue his thought she pulled her hand back away from his and she looked unbelivably sad, until it turned to anger.

"Then what are you doing? Why are you doing this to me? What the hell is wrong with you?" His heart clenched at the anger and the hurt in her voice. It was dark, but he could see that her eyes were glazed over with the sheen of fresh tears.

"What? No!" He took her hands, and she tried to pull away from him, but he pressed his face against them and continued. "No I mean, I like her, yeah. She's awesome and a truly horrendous artist, which I have to admire, but I don't mean that I _like _her. Not… not like that." She looked at him with surprise, and then laughed nervously.

"Oh! I'm… I'm sorry! I'm so silly!" She pulled her hands up to wipe away the tears that were still in her eyes. "I just…"

"Hey, hey… It's cool, don't get yourself so worked up, Harley."

"Heh, yeah! I know. I'm sorry." She smiled, but when he looked back up at her she still had tears in her eyes. Without a word, he pressed himself against her, pulling her face into his chest and wrapping his long arms around her protectively.

"I'm being totally honest now. Like you asked. Please don't cry anymore. I really don't like it when you cry." He squeezed her tightly, and she curled up into him.

"How do you stay so calm all the time, with everything that's happened?" She said, her voice breaking.

"I…" He wanted to say it was because that was just the way Striders were. Nothing got to a Strider, nothing broke them. He wanted to say something that made him sound cool and nonchalant, but he knew he couldn't. He had promised to be honest. "I don't." he admitted. He focused on the feel of her against his bare chest, felt her breathing against him. She could probably hear his heart beating too fast, his breaths coming too erratically. "I can't face a lot of things. Can't face my own death… Couldn't… Can't face yours." Tears were stinging his eyes again, and he mentally cursed himself for being so weak. He pressed harder against her, pushing the feeling down and shutting his eyes tightly. "I really lost it today Jade. That's why I ran off. I was so scared… really fucking scared that I… that you were gone and I hadn't been able to do a fuckin' thing about it. And then you woke up, and I was… I couldn't…" he paused for a moment to take a deep breath. "Fuck this is difficult." He felt her hand touch his, her fingers moving slowly over his own, and he took it as a sign that she understood. He pressed his face down into her dark hair and tried to stay outwardly calm, he had already given so much away, he was afraid to give away more.

He held her there for a few moments before she turned her face up to his. Their noses brushed; their lips less than an inch apart. It would have been so easy to press himself to her, but he waited. He wanted her to confirm that it was okay; that she wanted him as much as he wanted her.

Her heart was beating fast in her chest with his lips so close to hers; his breath warm and sweet. He was holding her so gently that it made her heart feel like it was going to burst. She brushed her lips against his, and he let her, barely moving his mouth on hers, breathing in her breath. She touched her top lip to his, and he kissed it almost imperceptibly. It was so light that it made her ache in anticipation. They remained on the edge of the kiss, the wanting growing in her as the seconds passed.

He wanted her so bad that it was almost a physical pain, his heart thrumming in his chest at every light touch, anxious and excited. He felt a heat in him that was like nothing he had ever experienced, and he was aching to act on it. He wanted her, he wanted to be as close to her as he could get, and he wasn't waiting anymore. He didn't have the time to wait.

Just as she felt like she could not handle it anymore, he pressed his mouth to hers, and she felt a shiver run through her so hard that she moaned softly against him. He kissed her deeper, more fervently. It was full of wanting and need and affection. She sucked gently on his lower lip, grazing her teeth lightly against it while wrapping her arms around him, pressing herself closer.

He turned her so that her back was against the floor, his mouth never separating from hers, needing more. He ran his tongue along her lips, and they parted for him, letting him in. Her tongue brushed against his, and the sensation made his body heat up. He was breathing hard and fast, and his heart was thrumming in his ears. It was like intoxication; he couldn't drink in enough of her. He pressed harder, twining his tongue with hers and running his hand through her hair, never taking his arms from around her. She had her hands in his hair too, pressing his face against hers. He ran his tongue along the roof of her mouth and then pulled away to bite her upper lip playfully. She took his lower lip between her own and sucked hard while he ran his own tongue along her upper lip. She shivered against him and pressed her fingers into the soft skin on his back, and he had to pull away from her as the heat moved through him again.

He slowed down after that, worried that that he might not be able to control himself if they kept this pace up for too much longer. He kissed her tenderly, then, no longer pressing his tongue into her mouth, but just pressing and touching her mouth softly as she reciprocated with similar sweetness. When he finally pulled away, he let his lips linger against hers for a moment as she placed light, tiny kisses against them. He moved and kissed her gently on her cheek and down to her neck where he was faced with the scar, visible in the dim light. He grazed it lightly with his nose, and then his lips, and finally he placed a feather-light kiss on it. He pressed himself up against her, feeling the weight of the day bearing down on him. She held him, then, silent and patient, running her fingers through his hair. She was okay, and so he was okay.

When he was calm he turned back toward her and she was smiling at him. A huge, stunning smile that made him want to kiss her more. Silently he let her go and got to his knees. She looked at him wordlessly and he stared back for a moment. She was flushed, and her hair was a mess, and he had never seen anything so beautiful. He bent over, sliding his arms beneath her, one under her knees and the other under her back, and he lifted her up as if she weighed nothing. She pressed her face against his chest and closed her eyes, and he put a small kiss on her forehead before he walked the short distance to his own bed.

He held her close to him as he climbed in, setting her down once he had situated himself. Her legs intertwined with his, and he kept his arms around her, allowing her head to rest against him. He pressed his lips against her forehead and breathed in deep. She pressed back, letting out a soft sigh against him.

They fell asleep like that, wrapped up in each other.

* * *

**FINALLY. **

**I think because of how fast I am writing this, it actually felt like this happened too early on, but then I realized that I'm nine chapters in and that I am a RIDICULOUS PERSON.  
****Short chapter, but they did not really do anything but kiss so all things considered I feel like I dragged it out as long as could be considered appropriate.****  
**

**Glad that the actual chapters were more eloquently written. You are all welcome.  
****(PS love love comments thank you etc seriously I never stop getting excited when I read them.)**

**-CS**


	10. Chapter 10

He woke up before her, and she was curled up against him breathing softly onto his chest. A huge smile came to his face when he remembered what had happened the night before. He pulled her closer and pressed his face into her hair, kissing her lightly. She sighed sweetly and snuggled against him, her face resting at the base of his neck, and he felt his heart speed up slightly.

He gently pushed her soft, dark hair away and touched her cheek, running his fingers up and down the side of her face and neck slowly. She tipped her head a bit, exposing more of her skin to him, and a smile crept to her lips. He quickly wiped the stupid grin off his face, sporting a significantly cooler nonchalant grin when she opened her eyes. Her smile widened as she looked at him. She put her hands behind his neck to pull his face to hers and she nuzzled his cheek sweetly and enthusiastically, giggling all the while. His heart was racing again, but he kept his face straight. He had to be cool.

"Mornin' to you too, Harley." He was working hard to keep the tone of his voice even despite the fact that he was the happiest he had been in he didn't know how long. She smiled in response and pressed her forehead to his. He could not help himself. He brought his face forward and kissed her lightly on the lips. When he pulled back, she was staring at him and her cheeks were flushed. He felt his heart thumping hard in his chest as they looked at each other, searching each other's faces, and then almost simultaneously they pressed hard against each other, a deep and passionate kiss. Their tongues twined between their mouths and Jade was moaning softly against him, sending shivers through his body.

He kissed her harder then, laying on his back and pulling her on top of him, hands running down her back and through her hair, occasionally finding her own hands as they explored one another. Her hands were against his shoulders, running down his arms and back up again. When she moved her hands to touch his collarbone he gasped audibly at the sensation that ran through him. She pulled back to look at him, then, and despite his carefully controlled expression, he felt a deep blush come to his face.

A smile was spread across her beautiful face, her hands still resting at the nape of his neck, obviously thoroughly enjoying his reaction. He pushed himself upright and pressed his face to hers, kissing her hard and deep, the blood in his face hot as she continued to move her fingers over his neck and chest. She was sitting in his lap, her legs wrapped around his waist while his hands rested against her hips, tracing the edges of her skin that peeked out beneath her top. He pulled away from her mouth to move his face to her neck. He nipped and kissed at her gently, and when he heard her moaning and breathing heavily at that he pressed his mouth down and sucked, running his tongue along her skin as he did so. She gasped and pressed her fingers into his skin. "_God, Dave…_"

The effect was immediate. He could feel the heat rising in him at the sound of her whispering his name, and his erection pressed against the soft cloth of his pants. He was not sure if he should pull away from her, it was the last thing he wanted. He wanted to be closer, to feel her against his bare skin, to make her say his name again. Before he could make up his mind, he felt her press against him, and a wave of pleasure and excitement ran through his body, making his face flush and his breath hitch. He heard her take a sharp breath and pull back away. _Shit shit shit._ He pulled his face away from her neck and pulled back enough to look into her eyes. She looked scared and flushed, and she was avoiding his gaze. He took both of his hands and put them gently against her face, running his thumbs along her warm cheeks. He looked at her intently and waited for her to look back patiently. When she finally did raise her vivid green eyes to him, there was a little smile on her face. "Sorry. I'm sorry," she said softly.

He shook his head immediately at that and pulled her face to his and placed a kiss on her forehead. He did not know how to say what he was feeling. He was a master wordsmith but when it came to something like this he was completely lost. He could not tell her, but he could show her. He kissed her nose, and her eyes, and her cheeks. All light and sweet and innocent, meant to comfort her, meant to let her know that he did not care. That it was okay. That he had never meant to do anything that would make her uncomfortable. All he wanted to do was have her close, make her happy, and keep her safe. She was smiling again, and he grinned back at her and placed one last small kiss on her mouth.

He put his arms around her, pulling her down onto the bed with him, his face pressed against hers. She turned her face to his and nuzzled her nose to his, a huge grin back on her face. That smile was going to be the end of him, he was convinced of that. As they cuddled, they began to talk. First tentatively, both still worked up from the events of the past 24 hours, but soon they were laughing and joking, perfectly comfortable and happy with one another. They had been talking for a good while before there was a knock on the door and Dave raised his head and faced the sound. "Sup?"

"Dave, it is Rose. May I come in?" Jade rolled off the bed as soon as she heard Rose's voice outside the door. Dave was impressed with how strangely graceful she went about it, landing on the floor almost silently and curling up in her makeshift bed of blankets as if she had been sleeping there the whole night. He grinned at her and turned his face back to the door.

"Yeah, sure." Rose walked in and glanced at Jade curled up on the floor. Jade grinned up at her and sat up.

"Mornin' Rose!"

"Good morning, Jade. Did you sleep well? That does not look comfortable."

"I slept fine!" she said with a huge smile on her face. "It's not close to as bad as it looks."

"I will take your word on that." She smiled back at her. "Anyway, I do have an important reason for coming here. Before I explain, I wanted to ask if you were feeling better." She directed the inquiry in Dave's direction.

"Nothing can keep a Strider down for long. You should know this by now, LaLonde."

"I suppose with all the excitement it slipped my mind. Forgive me." Her tone, as per usual when talking with her brother, was dripping with sarcasm.

"Apology accepted. So what's up?"

"I encountered a dream bubble last night and met up with someone I did not expect. It was one of the players from this new session. Her name is Roxy." She paused for a moment and continued. "She is my mom, or I suppose in this universe I am hers. It is very complicated and strange. She told me that her group has been waiting for our arrival for some time, and she gave me instructions for how to contact them, this eventually leading to a meeting in person if all goes well."

"Good, I'm ready to get all this shit taken care of. What exactly is the plan here?"

"For now, there is no true plan. We have to contact them directly first and we will be able to work out the details from there. There is no easy way to steer this meteor, so for now we will just have to keep drifting. Though we are safely within their session, it seems that their planets are still a good ways away from our position."

"That does not really seem to provide us a lot of options besides to sit our asses around hoping that Noir won't ambush us in our sleep."

"That is certainly the way it looks at the moment."

"Awesome. I'll get right to work on doing fuck all."

"I simply cannot properly express the relief I feel knowing that you are so invested in this, Strider."

"It's what I do. So how do we contact our mysterious ecto-relatives?"

"Easy. By using Pesterchum." Dave just stared at her for a moment, face expressionless.

"You have got to be kidding me about this. I had figured it would be something way more convoluted. Complexity of a fucking god-like magnitude."

"I am deeply sorry that you are disappointed."

"Nah. All that shit sounds hells of difficult anyway." He stood up from his bed, looking around.

Jade had stayed silent through the exchange, smiling at the verbal games the siblings liked to play with one another. She was secretly happy that they would have to spend more time drifting now that they were all back together again. Now that she and Dave were together again. Her heart sped a little just thinking about it. The boy that she had never been able to let go of wanted her the same way she had wanted him. She remembered with a blush just how much he had seemed to want her this morning. She had liked it, really liked it, and she wanted him to want her in that way, but she had not been prepared for his body's physical reaction. She had never even kissed anyone before Dave. She had absolutely no idea what to do past that. It made her feel terribly self-conscious.

"Earth to Harley." Dave was crouched in front of her waving his hand in front of her face. She stared up at him wordless, eyes wide and blushing deeply. "What's up?" his voice was tinged with concern. He reached forward as if to touch her face, but she stood up before he could.

"I want to wash up; Rose is there a shower that I can use?"

"Yes of course, follow me."

Dave stared at her back as the two girls left the room, suddenly wondering how he had fucked up, and how badly.

* * *

**The updates might slow down a wee bit, meaning I will probably only update once a day instead of multiple times a day. I'm having fun with this and so I will probably keep writing pretty quickly, but I'm trying to handle this plot business as delicately as I can. I feel like if I don't tread carefully, it could get way too stupid and complicated. I am leaving a lot of it to the imagination, and I am in no way going to try to write my own ending to Homestuck, more out of respect to the canonical events of the comic than anything else. You can all safely assume that everything that happened in the comic as far as Intermission 2 of Act 6 is unchanged (besides the addition of certain events frog-ways).**

**Anyway... synonyms for penis.**

**That is all.**

**-CS**


	11. Chapter 11

**(NSFW) **

Jade let the water run down her face, over her shoulders and down her thin body as it nearly singed her with heat. She did not care, it felt amazing; an amazing, wonderful distraction against the thought of Dave. Dave's flushed cheeks and the way he had moaned deeply at her touch; the press of his body against hers, his soft lips on her neck, his tongue in her mouth and on her skin. His teeth grazing and nipping and biting and the water was just_ really not hot enough_. She twisted the handle of the shower to full heat as she felt an intense pressure building between her legs. She was intoxicated with the thought of him so close to her, the memory of him him touching her and holding her and kissing her and _wanting her_. Her breath was shallow, and her mind was foggy with anxiety and heat, the way she had felt when he had pulled her on top of him and ran his hands down her back, barely skimming the bare skin before he moved his hands away again.

The space between her legs pulsed softly now with unbearable heat, a numb pleasure running through her as she panted shallow breaths, the hot shower water billowing clouds of steam around her, pressing against her skin like a blanket. She hated herself, hated her inexperience, hated her timidity. Hated that she had left him standing there, knowing he must have realized something was wrong. Tears sprang to her eyes as she pressed her hands to the back of her neck, and then to her face, shuddering as the feeling ate away at her, trying to push it down. Way, way down. Down to where the heat was, the heat of the shower, the heat of her own body, the heat that had been on Dave as she had touched him. It could have been his hands between her legs, not her own, her body against his instead of the wall of the streaming shower.

She whimpered as she pressed her fingers against her mound, holding it there for a moment before beginning to move her fingers over it in light, slow circles. The sensation was overwhelming, her body hypersensitive and wanting with lust. She was breathing heavily and noisily, and she soon had to hold her free hand over her mouth to keep anyone from hearing her outside. She shut her eyes and there was his face, the way it had looked the night before. He was on top of her, kissing her for the first time, his cheeks red with blush and heat. And then she thought of the morning, the way his hands had felt against her skin, and she imagined those hands instead of her own, and she was so close that she almost fell over, putting all of her weight on the shower wall. She remembered the feeling of him, hard and pressing against the inside of her legs before she had pulled back. But in her mind she didn't, she pressed herself back against it and rubbed, and she imagined his moans of pleasure as she let out her own, moving her hand faster against herself, feeling the ache of needing pleasure that let her know she was about to come. With another heavy, kneading motion she said his name into her hand, orgasm wracking her body with a fierce wave of pleasure. It moved through her like electricity, her legs giving out as she slid to the floor.

She breathed hard as her vision blurred, pleasure melting away and suddenly aware how unbelievably hot it was. Her skin felt like fire as the steaming water poured over her, her face flushed with heat that was no longer arousal. She tried to push herself back up, but she was tired, so very tired. She closed her eyes, trying to focus herself so she could use her powers, teleport, or move the knob, or open the door. Her mind was too slow, her thoughts coming long after she had lost the ability to process them. She whimpered softly, this time in tired fear, tears coming to her eyes that ran cool against her hot cheeks.

Jade had been gone for a long while before he started to grow anxious. Maybe she _was_ mad at him? Maybe she had not intended to come back. He felt a pang of unease at these thoughts, and quickly pushed them back away. He was going to go find her and ask her for himself instead of letting his shitty teenage angst tendencies to take over. He walked immediately toward Rose's room, hoping to find her and Jade there, ending this search and his confusion swiftly. He was never so lucky. He looked in and after a fairly decent go at snooping around, his search remained futile. He decided to check the computer room, and so headed in that direction. When he got there, he say Rose sitting across from Kanaya, talking with a smirk on her face. "Hey, LaLonde."

"Hm?" She said, turning toward him with a lingering smirk.

"Do you know where Harley ran off to?" He phrased it as nonchalantly as he could, he did not want her to catch something in his voice that would give away his anxiety.

"I showed her into the shower in my room a few hours ago, and then after she said she was going to go back to spend more time with you. Did she not show up."

Dave's heart plummeted, but he kept a straight face. "No, I haven't seen her."

And then a feeling of worry gripped him, and he could not explain why he needed to check but he didn't question himself as he turned from his sister to walk back in the direction he had come. She was used to his abrupt departures, and turned back to Kanaya to resume their conversation.

He reached Rose's room and walked a b-line to her bathroom door, touching his ear against it to find out if there was any movement. There wasn't. There was no sound but that of the running shower. He knocked hard on the door and raised his voice so she could hear him over the sound of the water. "Harley?"

He thought he heard something, but it did not sound like an answer so he tried again, raising his voice a little more "Harley are you in there?" Again, there was a soft noise. Someone was in there alright. He knocked again, "Jade answer me." He said it with a little too much inflection in his voice, but at the moment he was beyond caring. He pressed his ear hard against the door and listened as intently as he could. He heard a light thump and then a shaky, whispery voice, "D-Dave." His cool was gone instantaneously as he cluched for the doorknob. It wouldn't turn. _Fuck no fuck no._ Without hesitation, without even backing up first, he rammed his body into the door, a dull but throbbing pain shooting through him at the shock of it against his bandaged body. He sucked in the air, his eyes tightly shut as if to shut out the pain, and then without wasting another second he threw himself against the door again. _FUCK._ He ignored the pain this time and threw himself against it again and again until the wood buckled. He pushed himself through the door into the unbelievably hot, steam-filled room. He had trouble breathing in the thick air, but he ignored that as well and found his way to the shower door. He could see the shadow of a body behind the fogged glass, curled up limply against the wall. He wrenched open the door, his hair already drenched with the water in the air. He shoved his arm inside and grabbed at the knob, turning it until the water came out icy.

Without a thought he went in, the freezing water pouring over him causing his body to convulse with shock. He barely even noticed, his eyes on Jade, staring up at him with tired, empty, red-rimmed eyes, the green striking out at him in contrast. Her body was on fire, her skin red with heat and her breaths coming in slow, shallow pants. She was shivering as the water hit her, but she didn't make any move to speak. She barely seemed to even register that he was there at all. He did the only thing he could think of and put his arms beneath her the way he had last night before carrying her into the bed with him, being careful not to put his hands too near to her chest or her thighs, eyes focused unflinchingly on her face. He pulled her to him, cradling her body against his lap, pulling her up to rest her head on his chest. He ran his shaking hand through her wet hair, and he felt her breathing against him, more evenly than before. She was still shivering, and he pulled her closer, pressing his face against her forehead. "I'm sorry, we have to cool you off. I'm sorry," he was trembling. She nodded weakly, still shaking hard. He pulled her into him as hard as he could, wrapping his arms around her curled up body trying to keep her from shivering more.

He waited, the cold of the water leaving him tense and numb, until the flush of her skin began to recede. It was time to take her out. It was an effort pushing himself to his feet, his muscles feeling as if they were frozen solid, but he finally did. Cradling the girl in his arms, he stepped out of the shower and took her into Rose's room and lay her on the bed. She was not shivering as much anymore, and she did not look him in the eye as she pulled herself into the fetal position, trying desperately to cover herself. Dave silently walked into the bathroom again, grabbed a big lavender towel hanging from the wall, reached in to turn off the shower, and returned to the bedroom. He unfolded the towel and wrapped it around her gently, all while making sure she could tell he was not looking by the direction he turned his face. Once he was done, he pulled away and turned around, making no expression the whole while despite the fact that his body was still shivering with a deep, unrelenting chill. "G-get dry, and w-warm." He said, failing to keep the shivering out of his voice.

He walked out of the room and Jade just stared. She should have thanked him. She should have done _something_, but she hadn't.

* * *

**Finally got over my fear of writing dirty words (within the context of the story). Well, not quite, but... it's a start.**

**Even without the romantic stuff, I honestly read Dave as being this kind of person. The kind to care about his friend's well-being before his own. He showed this when he went back in time to save John, even though it meant an enormous amount of self-sacrifice. His identity. Anyway, I have a lot of feelings about Dave. So many. **

**-CS**


	12. Chapter 12

**(NSFW)**

Dave stepped out of the room soundlessly, closing the door behind him. His mind was a haze, his eyes blank behind his shades, and he was completely soaking wet from head to toe. He shivered uncontrollably, and he clenched his jaw in a useless effort to steady himself. He knew he should get out of his wet clothes soon, but he could not bring himself to want to move away from the door. He was afraid to leave her; he had not even wanted to leave the room.

She had been so tiny in his arms, naked and shaking uncontrollably. Even with her near-omnipotent powers, she was somehow still fragile. She did not guard herself. Not from others and not from herself. He felt angry, and worried, and useless, and there was a guilt that rose in him, gnawing at the edges of everything else, because he knew that she was not as helpless as that. There was a delicacy to her in the way she let herself be so completely open, not selective in her sincerity, her passions, or her resolve. She laughed when she was happy and she cried when she was sad, and she really let herself feel those things, nothing like the way he tried to push everything away, burying it under irony and humor or simple indifference. It was because of this, her insane, maddening, beautiful way, that she was that she was able to affect him so much. He had no defenses against her. He had always been able to choose how much he revealed, how much he let himself feel, but when it came to Jade it was all he could do to keep his face straight, unable to force himself to push down everything she made him feel, whether that feeling was wonderful or terrible. He simply felt more whole when she was with him. It was why he wanted her.

He had thought about her during the three years they were apart, remembering a giggling, silly girl that had made his cheeks flush once. Someone who he, even then, felt the need to protect and care for, even if it was just to treat her more gently than he treated his other friends. And then he had finally seen her again, seeing the woman she was becoming, no longer the gangly child he remembered. His barriers were insubstantial against the affection he felt for her, stronger than they had been been before, and when she had finally smiled at him he had been overcome with nervous excitement, something he _never_ anticipated. When he had almost lost her, he had broken. He had always thought it was her who needed him, but he was slowly coming to the realization that what he had 'always thought' was complete bullshit.

So no, he could not leave. Not now even as he stood there soaking wet and freezing, a feeling he was very unfamiliar and uncomfortable with having grown up in the heat of Texas. He could take it, though. If his brother had taught him anything, it was endurance; that and an unfathomable amount of self-control. That was what it took to live with his brother. He sat against the wall next to the door and pulled his long legs up to his chest, his arms and face rested on his knees.

* * *

Her limbs were still very weak, but the shaking had subsided and she could breathe again. She had pulled on a pair of sleeping shorts and a loose t-shirt she had found in the room, her skin still aching numbly and sensitive to the touch. She was still flushed, her skin still radiating uncomfortable heat that made her dizzy and exhausted. She got a large glass of water from the sink and gulped it down in almost one go, and then without pause filled the glass back up and drank that down too before she went slowly back to the bed to lay down, the trip already having exhausted her.

She wished he had stayed, despite how vulnerable she had felt as he laid her on the bed, the memory of his arms protective around her naked form. His body had been shaking almost as badly as her own from the cold. He did not have any concern for himself; he had just focused on her, keeping her safe. She was on the verge of tears, her heart feeling like it was going to burst in her chest. She had always liked him, because he made her laugh, and was kind to her. She really did believe he was as cool as he acted, and she had always admired his ability to take everything in stride while she was always emotional. Then, when she had finally seen him in the snow for the first time, she realized that she liked him so much more than that. She thought he was beautiful, with his pale hair and skin, long limbs and lean build. Now it was something else, something stronger. She needed to find him.

Pushing herself back up on her weak legs, she walked across the room, using the walls and furniture to keep herself upright. When she got to the door, she leaned against it softly, letting her weight fall onto it for a moment before taking the knob in her hands and turning it, using it as a crutch as she opened the door.

He was there, still wet from the shower, sitting up against the wall with his head in his arms. He had never left, and she did not know whether to cry or yell. "Dave, what are you doing?" she said it, her voice soft and choked with tears. Apparently she had chosen to cry.

He looked up at her and his lips twitched slightly, as if he had suppressed the urge to smile or frown. "H-hey. Are you okay?" He sounded as tired as she felt. Instead of answering, she half knelt, half dropped to her knees, Dave staring as she hit the floor. "Wha-" She cut him off, pressing her lips to his desperately, a sob caught in her throat. He kissed her back, taking her hands in his own and pressing them to his face. While the heat emanated from her body, his was icy to the touch. She pulled back away from the kiss and pushed herself shakily to her feet. She held his hands as she stood, and he followed her her quietly. She led him into the room and shut the door behind her. He just stood there staring at her, his limbs shaking from time to time from the cold in him.

She moved toward him and his hand reached up to touch her face. He stroked her cheek gently as she stared up at him, and slowly put her hands on his sides at the edge of his shirt. He seemed on the verge of a question, but he didn't ask, just waited. She slid her hands under his shirt and his breath hitched. Without a word she pushed it up, and he lifted his arms for her as she slid it over his head. He shivered as the air hit his damp skin, and she let herself stare at him momentarily. His hair was messy and his face was flushed, but he still did not make any move, seeming to wait for her. She moved forward again after putting his wet shirt on top of the discarded towel he had given her and put a hand on his chest, he was breathing fast and she could feel his heat pounding hard under her hand. She took a breath to brace herself, reaching down to touch the button of his dark jeans. Dave took her hand in his instantaneously, moving it away, and stared at her. "Jade, what are you doing?"

"You can't stay like this." She said simply, a blush rising to her cheeks, but she was absolute in her resolve. If he was not going to take care of himself, she was going to do it for him.

"Jade I…" he paused, looking away from her for a moment before continuing, "I can't… control everything. So just... leave them. I'm fine." She stared where she thought his eyes were behind his dark shades and she must have been right because he turned his head slightly away from her when she did so.

"Dave, I don't care. I really don't."

"You do." He said bluntly.

"Okay fine, yes, I do, but I care more about you. So let me take your damn pants off."

He stared at her, then, and he pursed his lips to keep from grinning. "I know you want me bad Harley, but don't you think you're being a bit pushy? I'm like an innocent virgin schoolgirl here." She glared knives at him, and he could not hold back the grin anymore. "All being macked on by the total choicest hottie in school." She continued to glare and raised her hand as if she wanted to hit him and he took it in his, tight enough that she couldn't easily pull away, not that she completely wanted to. He started grazing her hand with his thumb. "He's the star QB, and I'm the nerd, but it doesn't matter now that he's got an eyeful of my bodilacious bod."

Jade snorts out a laugh. "Bodilacious. I don't think that's a word!"

"It's a goddamn word Harley, I'm spell checkin' this shit all up in my glorious rhyme-machine. This train is always runnin', and we're using the best fuel. We have the dinner mystery theatre and all the old bitties are lining up to get up on that shit. They paid for the tickets and no one is leaving this murder train till the killer's brought the fuck down. Justice prevails, you may go back to your regularly scheduled fuckin' awesome."

She was bent over with laughter by the time he was finished, and when she stood back up to face him he took her face in his hands and kissed her hard. She moaned into his mouth, both in pleasure and surprise. He wrapped his arms around her back and pressed her to him, her body warming him, and he was aching with want for her. She wrapped her arms around his neck and he lifted her off the ground, her legs wrapping tight around his waist. He pressed her against the wall at her back and sucked her lower lip between his, licking and biting softly at it as she shuddered and gasped against him. He pulled one of his arms from around her using the other one and the wall to keep her against him, and he started brushing her throat with his fingers, eliciting a moan from her. He could feel the pressure and heat building between his legs, but he didn't stop. He wanted her so badly that he ached. He kissed her hard, her mouth opening to his, the two of them trying and pressing to get closer. He worked his hand slowly down her collarbone along the outside of her shirt, edging closer and closer to her small breasts, and she was breathing heavy and grasping at him, digging her fingers into his back, and it was driving him crazy.

He had his hand right above her breast now, lingering in anxious anticipation. She pulled her mouth away from his and pressed it against his ear, running her tongue along the lobe and breathing hard. "I_ want_ you to." He was fully hard against her now, and she moved herself against him and made him shudder and moan with pleasure. He moved his hand down to cover her breast, and he squeezed firmly on it, his fingers moving deftly as she whimpered with pleasure. Her skin was hot through her shirt, and her face flushed a deep red. "God Dave, _don't stop_." She said, voice breathy and needing. He ran his thumb over her nipple, until it was hard, and then he pinched it between his thumb and forefinger, eliciting a gasp from the girl in his arms. He pressed his swollen member against her and breathed heavily. It felt good, really fucking good, and it just made him hotter. He moved his hand up under her shirt and put it against the thin fabric of her bra. She shuddered as he began to tease her with light touches and pinching. She thrust her hips against him, and he moaned loud into her mouth. "Does that feel good?" She asked him, breathless.

"Fuck yes." He said, his voice husky and slightly desperate. She moved her hips again and he nearly cried out, pressing his mouth to hers to muffle the sounds he was making. He rubbed himself against her, pressing them both hard against the wall and grasping at her breast, wanting to hear her again.

"Aaauuuh Aaa…" She breathed, "… Dave, will you let me take your pants off _now_?" It should have been a joke, but she said it desperately, and he was so incredibly hot. He took his hand away from her breast and wrapped his arm back around her, pulling her away from the wall and carrying her to the bed. He crushed her to the mattress, his face buried in her neck, laying soft wet kisses down to her collar before taking his hands from under her and gently pushing her shirt up to reveal the soft skin of her stomach. He leaned down and kissed her right above her belly button, and then down until he was near the waistband of her shorts. She whimpered softly as he kissed her above both of her hipbones before pulling away to look up at her face.

"Jade." he said, his heart pounding in his throat as she looked down at him.

"What is it? Is something wrong?" she asked him reaching down to run her fingers through his hair.

"God, no. I just…" he hesitated and moved so he was on top of her, his face pressed against hers. "You're really… so fucking beautiful, Jade."

* * *

**To be motherfucking continued.**

**-CS**


	13. Chapter 13

She stared at him, her fingers running through his tangled and damp blonde hair, his mouth, red and swollen from kissing. She wanted to pull his face forward. She wanted to taste him again, but instead she just kept looking. He was breathing hard and heavy and she could see his heart beating in his throat. She knew he was nervous even though his face was as impassive as ever. He leaned down slightly, his forehead resting gently on hers, and she felt his breath touching her warm skin. He wasn't cold anymore, and she was silently thankful for that. "C'mon Harley, say something." He breathed, and there was barely a hint of anxiety in his otherwise steady voice.

She couldn't. She could not find the words, her mouth hanging slightly open in helpless silence. He had told her she was beautiful, but that was not what it had _sounded_ like. It had sounded like a much more serious confession, and she did not know at all how to respond. She was terrified, and unsure of herself. He pulled back from her, his elbows straightening as he pressed his hands into the bed beside her, his face turned to the side as if avoiding her gaze. She did not want him to go, she wanted to put her arms around him and hold him to her, but she did not know what to _say_. "Dave." He jerked his head to look down at her, still silent. She propped herself up on her elbows and pressed her face into the crook of his neck, and he shivered at the touch. She felt one of his arms move around her back, his hand sliding up to the back of her head, stopping there to hold her gently to him. She pressed her lips to his skin, and his hand gripped her tighter, pulling her just slightly closer. She opened her mouth and ran a tentative tongue against his skin, and an almost silent moan escaped his lips. She could feel the heat rising in her as she listened to him barely hold back his expressions of pleasure.

She pulled back away and turned to face him again, and he looked back down at her. "Good distraction."

"Thanks!" she said with a huge grin. He opened his mouth as if to respond, but suddenly his head jerked to the side. "What…?"

"So, color me delusional, but I could have sworn that this was my room." Jade nearly jumped out of her skin at the sound of Rose's voice and immediately reached down to pull her shirt back over her stomach.

"Rose! Oh my gosh! I am soooo sorry!" She was trying to get off the bed, and Dave moved easily to the side to allow her to abscond unhindered. Despite Jade's reaction he was as calm as ever, moving slowly and deliberately off of the bed and turning to look at his sister. Rose merely stood there with one eyebrow raised and a hand on her hip, staring at them with a glint of amusement in her lavender eyes.

"No please, don't be. I am sorry that I intruded at such an inconvenient moment."

"Nooo! We were just…" she blushed and Dave was looking away from both of the girls as if very transfixed on the bare wall to his left.

"It really is fine, Jade. Please do not be embarrassed, I…"

"Hey, ladies." Both of the girls turned their heads to look at Dave, who was still staring at the wall with a weirdly intense expression. "Do you hear that?"

"What should I be hearing?" Rose asked, her eyebrow arching again as she looked him over. The three of them stayed very quiet for a couple seconds before there was a faint banging sound coming from the direction of the wall Dave had been so transfixed with, followed by a faint visible vibration that shuddered through the room.

Suddenly there was a crackling sound, and everything was awash in a green light. Bec Noir sliced at the air, and Rose dodged it almost effortlessly as she retrieved the Thorns of Ogoloth from her sylladex, crackling with dark power and ready to fight. He snarled loudly, clearly furious, but his attention was stolen as he sniffed the air. He turned to face Jade, who was glaring at him and hovering slightly above the ground, a green energy surrounding her. _Jade. _Dave was on him in an instant, equipping his sword and turning back the time-tables without even glancing at his own fingers. He ran at Noir and sliced, but his attack hit the free air as the demon disappeared in an instant, reappearing at Dave's side only inches away. Noir had his sword posed to attack him, and if he had been allowed to make his move it would have been a fatal blow, but Jade summoned Dave to her side and moved in front of him protectively.

"Bad dog! Worst enemy!" She spat, and Noir let out a disappointed sound through his sharp, bared teeth. Rose took the opportunity to run at him and shove her needles into his neck. Noir made a horrible screeching sound as Rose's power pulsed through him. He flickered in and out of sight, green sparks flying off of him as he struggled to gain control back over his own power. Rose dug the needles in deeper and he jerked around trying to fling her off of him. Jade raised her hands and focused on holding him there, but he just struggled harder. Dave ran back around Jade and charged at Noir, hitting him for a fairly decent amount of damage. Jade was losing her grip on Noir quickly, and the power around him gasped and lit the room as he fought against the restraints. "Dave! Move!"

Dave heard her voice, and for a moment he hesitated, but Noir was spewing sparks like the fucking Fourth of July and he was not going to let himself be killed because of some burning need for vengeance. Dave was pissed, though. He wanted to kill the bastard. Seeing him again, seeing him look at her like he was fucking happy she was okay. How fucked up can he get? "DAVE!" he snapped out of it and jumped back, just in time to dodge the sword that Noir thrust toward his chest. Rose was struggling to stay on the demon's back, her power noticeably waning as he bucked and snarled, trying to toss her off. Noir flickered again, and then with a burst of green sparks he was gone, followed almost immediately by a loud crash in the direction of the computer lab. Dave looked back to Jade but she was already running out the door with Rose at her heels, so he followed them wordlessly.

They ran through the halls toward the sounds of fighting, the crackle of Noir's powers echoing off of the high ceilings and reverberating through the complex. It was unnerving, and it made Dave move faster. As they rounded a corner they ran into Karkat, and his face was flushed and angry. "Where the fuck is Terezi?" Dave looked at him and frowned beneath his shades.

"Figured she'd be with you."

"Yeah well she's not, and we've got a fucking all-powerful rampaging murder machine on the loose."

"Then I propose we move." Rose said simply, bracing herself to keep running in the direction of the noise. Without another word they were on the move again. The noises got louder as they got closer to the computer room, and when they reached the transporter they paused to considered how they would enter, not wanting to line up for a systematic slaughter on the other end.

"I need to go first!" Jade said, moving toward the pad.

"No." Dave said, immediately regretting it but not letting it show in his expression. She shot him a look and turned away from him too fast for him to fully understand the meaning behind it.

"He won't hurt me, and I can hold him while you all come through after me." Dave clenched his fist around the hilt of his sword as his eyes lingered on her still too-red skin that was barely covered by her insubstantial clothes, but stayed silent as she went through. The rest of them followed swiftly, Dave entering last after Karkat. When Dave entered the room, he was legitimately surprised by the scene in front of him. There was a creature there that looked exactly the same as Noir, but instead of black it was white, and it was attacking him relentlessly. The stranger part was that Noir was merely blocking its attacks, not attempting to make any of his own.

"Who the fuck is that?"

* * *

**Plot? Interrupting my smut? Bullshit.**

**Okay so, here's the deal, I am currently getting ready for my big (incredibly fucking important to my future) senior art exhibition, graduating from college, and a whole plethora of different stuff related to those two things, so yeah. I am still updating fairly quickly considering, but I can't promise things will be terribly consistent. They might be, I mean I should still have some free time, albeit strained and anxiety filled, but if I don't you will know the reason why. Anyway, thanks so much for the support. It makes me happy to see all the views and favorites and comments, I'm really flattered.**

**-CS**


	14. Chapter 14

Everything was in ruins, pieces of broken machinery and stuffing from the elaborate furniture Kanaya and Rose had set up in the space was strewn everywhere. There were also minute spatters of red blood dispersed throughout, and it was immediately clear where the blood was coming from. Noir was bleeding from the gash in his shoulder where Rose had stabbed him with her needles. From the way it looked it seemed as though they had managed to legitimately wound him, and this was only backed up by the slight impairment of the right side of his body as he fended off the white demon's attacks. Everyone who had entered the room before him was staring dumbfounded at the strange scene. Everyone, that is, except Jade.

Jade was above the ground, her entire body enveloped in green energy that pulsated slowly as she focused on Noir. She was manipulating him again, as was obvious by the way he flickered like a dying light bulb as he attempted to teleport away from the onslaught. Her interference was allowing the other creature to land significant blows on him, breaking away at his defense as he shuddered with each impact. Jade did not even seem to register the appearance of her allies as she fought, all of her energy spent on Noir and their fight. Dave could not help but notice the way her limbs shook slightly as she fought to keep her control, her hair still damp and her skin too deeply flushed.

"Terezi!" Karkat screamed, and Dave turned his head to face the sound. His stomach twisted up when he saw the trail of Terezi's blood leading to the corner of the room where she sat slumped against the wall. She was gripping her shoulder, her hand soaked in a teal mess. She looked up at Karkat as he ran to her, a smile on her face, a little strained at the edges but uplifting to see nonetheless.

"Don't go freak out okay? I'm fine. This won't kill me." Her voice was similarly weaker than usual, but her resolve was unyielding as she pushed herself up further against the wall, aided only slightly by Karkat's hand on her good shoulder.

"This isn't a good fucking time to be brave Terezi! Just let me-"

"Karkat! I am not arguing with you right now! Jack smells weak; his blood's rotten scent is all over this room! This is our best chance to get him for good."

"FINE. You hear that you gogdamn bulgestain? We're going to FUCKING DESTROY YOU!" Karkat spun around, his weapon ready in his hand. There was also look of genuine anger on his face, which was surprisingly rare considering how often he acted as such. His blood was on fire as he charged Noir and sliced at him with impressive speed and accuracy. Dave had been staring at Terezi, but when Karkat ran into the fray he snapped out of it and followed suite. Rose had already joined Jade, and she had managed to tangle his limbs in the thread from her needles, assisting in hindering his ability to block and allowing their blows to hit him as they attacked relentlessly. The white demon swung her sword at Noir's neck, but he managed to barely dodge the blow and her slice hit open air.

Dave looked up toward Jade from time to time, watching to be sure that nothing would happen to her. She seemed to be completely transfixed with the battle, and he understood how she could have been taken by surprise. Her focus never faltered, even as she fought against Noir's own power. She remained calm and resolved, but she shut herself off to everything else. She was beginning to look tired, as well, and it made him nervous as he caught a quick glance at the very visible scar on her neck from the day before. Suddenly Jade shuddered, and he heard a loud crack emanating from the center of the room. Jack had finally managed to escape her grip and abscond from the crowded space, leaving them alone with the white stranger before it teleported with another loud crack. Then, before anyone could even register what had happened, Jade disappeared as well, and Dave did not even look at the others as he ran for the transporter in the center of the room.

"HEY IDIOT, wait a fucking second." Karkat's voice was the last he heard as his feet hit the pad.

He ran through the halls, listening hard for the sound of fighting. He did not hear anything, though, and he was completely unsure what direction he should be running in. Noir would probably have been trying to abscond; they had gotten a lot of hits on him, so maybe he had headed outside of the lab. He turned around and headed to the exit, hoping his hunch was the right one.

As he exited the lab, the first thing he saw was WV, having finally emerged from the lab to look mesmerized up at the dark sky. Above him, he saw four figures. Noir and his white twin were still locked in battle as Jade a John surrounded him, a visible stream of air whirling around his figure as John focused his powers. Without thought Dave launched himself into the air, his sword poised for attack in his strong but pliable grip. As he approached Noir, the demon spun around with sword in hand and Dave had to literally drop midair to avoid a major laceration across his uncovered chest.

"Hey man!" John yelled at him from the other side of Noir, taking his hand away from his hammer for a split second to wave at him. Before Dave could respond to this idiotic gesture, John already had his grip back on the weapon and was readying to land what he assumed would be a devastating blow on Noir.

"Not the time, bro." Dave said, shooting forward again with another attack. "Harley, you holdin' up?" Jade didn't answer him, but he saw her nod her head slightly and he took it as a yes. She seemed to be shaking more now, though, and a thin sheen of sweat was visible on her uncovered skin. The white creature was attacking Noir with vigorous relentlessness, and as it raised its arms to lay a blow on him, Noir shot backwards at Jade. Dropping her hands as she dodged out of the way, Noir was released from her grip and took the opportunity to teleport quickly away from their position, heading back into the empty void beyond the meteor

Looking as if it were about to go after him, the white creature hesitated as it looked down, catching WV's eyes for a moment. They both raised their hands to one another in a gesture of greeting.

"Huh. You know him?" Dave asked, face straight despite his genuine surprise. It looked back at him, and there was a look of unmistakable gratitude on its face.

"Please keep him safe," she said simply, turning around in the direction Noir had headed and disappearing with a loud crack.

"What." Dave said, and it sounded like more of a statement than a question.

"Jade!" He heard John's distressed voice and turned quick to see Jade losing altitude, the green light around her flickering erratically. He dove toward her, arms outstretched toward her lithe body. He caught up with her, his arms moving gently around her form as he matched her speed before slowing down, not wanting to cause any impact shock. When he felt his feet hit the ground, he gently lowered her as well, one arm secured around her waist, and the other around her shoulders. When he felt her balance herself, he loosened his grip and she pulled herself away from him, pressing her hand to her head.

"Haha, don't worry, I'm okay!" She smiled, but her eyelids drooped and she swayed a little on her feet.

"Sure." He said, not convinced but respecting her enough not to say it. He had his hands in his pockets then, and she walked toward their group of friends that had just emerged from the lab.

"What happened? Where the fuck's Jack?" Karkat snapped, one arm around Terezi holding her up against him. She was grinning in her usual way despite the obviously significant amount of help she needed from Karkat to stay upright.

"Karkat don't be so tactless!" Terezi scolded. He turned his head to grimace at her, but his face softened as soon as he registered the teal blood on her.

"He absconded again." Dave said monotonously. "Couldn't take the beating we were handing out. Understandably. That white lady followed him. At least I think she was a lady. Sure as hell sounded like one. Seemed to be tight with The Mayor, too."

"Ugh. Fuck." Karkat's grimace deepened. "What the fuck ever."

Dave looked around, and he could no longer see Jade anywhere. "Where's Harley?"

"She went inside; I told her she could sleep in my room. She did not look well." Rose responded, pointing toward the entrance back into the lab. Without a word, Dave left to re-enter the lab, fatigue and soreness setting in. As he approached Rose's room, he hesitated at the door, and decided to knock before barging in. There was no response, so he slowly opened the door and looked in. Jade was collapsed on the bed, eyes closed and her round glasses askew on her flushed face. He moved silently to the side of the bed, crouching down beside her on the floor as he reached his hand out to push her dark, tangled hair away from her face.

"You are such a gigantic idiot, Dave." She said suddenly, eyes still closed as she pulled her knees and arms closer to her body, not pulling away from his hand as he continued to draw light circles against her hairline.

"Yeah. Why am I an idiot, then." He responded, neither his movements nor his expression changing as he did so.

"You think I want you to die for me? Well I don't. You're so fucking reckless. Do you even think before you run into a fight? Maybe it's not even for me. Maybe you're just so convinced that you'll be fine, that you'll bail yourself out with time travel or… something else just as ridiculous or fucking convoluted. Or maybe you're just so cool and unconcerned about it that it doesn't even cross your mind. Maybe you legitimately don't care. Maybe you just believe Dave Motherfucking Strider can't be killed. Well he can. I've seen it." He stopped moving, his fingers hovering just above her skin and he could feel the heat emanating from it. He was transfixed by what she was saying to him, her eyes opening to stare right at him, right where his eyes were behind his shades.

"Jade."

"Well _I care_, okay?" she finished, her eyes now reticent to find his. Dave pulled away from her, expressionless, and stood up to face away from her. After a moment, he began to walk back to the end of the bed, and Jade's eyes widened. "Where are you going?" she asked, worry apparent in her voice. He did not answer, but instead made his way silently around the bed, getting in on the other side and pressing himself against her back as he wrapped his long arms around her small frame. She tangled her legs with his as he pressed his face against her neck.

"Nowhere, that's kind of the point." He said simply.

* * *

**Aw man, he got away again.**

**_Damn it._**

**Anyway, a huge thanks to all those who commented on the last chapter, it really made me happy to read them all. A special shout out to Air-Head-Ry, I hope you recover fast from your head injury! I can't believe you commented on my story despite the fact that you could barely read. I almost cried when I realized what you had written! I am flattered, but I want you to take care of yourself okay? Anyway, again, your support is wonderful and then reason I keep writing, so thank you so much.**

**-CS**


	15. Chapter 15

**(NSFW)**

"You're saying that you're not going to quit with all this risky business?" Jade avoided grabbing his hand, but she stared at it nonetheless.

"I'm a knight, it's kind of in the job description. I take these matters very seriously."

"You don't take anything seriously, Dave!"

"I take hells of tons of things excruciatingly seriously. There's hardly a thing in the goddamn universe that I don't take seriously on literally a daily basis. If being serious were sports, I would be the key goal passer, shooting baskets and running down the middle line after the dirty left-shoulder. Those assholes don't play fair, but I am simply the best front man in the NBCL. No one can match the ease at which I clutch that pigskin in the tight round."

"The _what_?"

"You heard me, Harley. Sports, just a fucking mess of em. And I am the best at those sports. Rose knows. You should ask her sometime. I'm sure she would relish the chance to fall on her knees and weep of my choice Sports prowess like the unabashed fan girl she is."

"Hehe. You know that whole being serious thing, Dave? You're ruining your credibility with these wordy shenanigans you are currently pulling!"

"You really sound like Egderp sometimes. You have clearly been spending too much time with him."

"I am rolling my eyes. Can you see this happening?"

"No, no. My best friend Harley would never roll her eyes at me. She thinks Dave Strider is the coolest thing since magnetized Squiddles." Jade did not answer, but she pulled her limbs closer to her body and he held her tighter as she did so. They were both silent for a long time, and he struggled to find the words that he really wanted to say. "If you want me to promise you that I won't put my life on the line anymore… I can't."

"You can't or you won't?"

"Both. And I don't think you would either."

"That's different. I-"

"No. It's not different. It's the same goddamn thing, Harley." His tone rose slightly, as if struggling not to yell.

"I couldn't let any of you get hurt, not if I could prevent it!"

"Yeah. Okay, well... same." Jade sighed audibly, and stared helplessly at the wall opposite her.

"John was right, this is pretty much the worst possible time to be thinking about romance." Dave's heart dropped at that, and a sudden anxiety gripped him that threatened to disintegrate his calm demeanor. She continued, her voice soft. "This is… a bad distraction, and we are going to get ourselves killed if we can't stay focused."

"What." He did not want to believe that she was saying it to him. It didn't make any fucking sense.

"You know I'm right." She _was_ right. He _knew _she was right, but he really didn't _care_. All he could manage was a noncommittal jerk of the head, which he was fairly certain she had taken as grudging compliancy. She turned to face him as she said it, and pressed her forehead against his. He didn't know what to say, so he just stared at her. She touched her hand gently to his face, and a shiver ran through him as she stroked his cheek. Then, far too soon, she moved away from him and sat up on the bed.

"I guess… I think I'll sleep with Rose tonight." She said simply, back to him. He stood up slowly, not sure if she wanted him to leave, but when she made no move to stop him, he walked to the door. As he closed it behind him, only one thought ran through his mind over and over:

_What the fuck just happened? _

And then after a while: _Why did I let it happen?_

After wandering around aimlessly, lost in his own personal panic Hell, Dave found Rose at one of the last un-broken computers in the computer room, typing away frantically to someone who used bubblegum pink text. "Sup," he said, walking up behind her to glance at the conversation.

"I am talking to Roxy. She is… interesting. I admit I am quite fascinated by her. She definitely reminds me of my mother."

"What, is she a ridiculous lush or do you just feel compelled to engage in passive aggressive bullshit despite her genuine attempts to bond with you?"

"Wow, Strider. Spoken like a true LaLonde. Also, yes to both of those things. Moreso the former."

"Ah. Well what does our charmingly inebriated ecto-mother slash daughter have to say for herself?"

"Not a lot, at least not a whole lot that is terribly cognizant or important in any way. She does go on quite a bit."

"Reminds me of another blonde girl I know."

"You are funny, Strider."

Dave spent the rest of the day listening to Rose's long and verbose detailing of the events pertaining to the new players, which eventually devolved into him fucking with her and her staunchly and sarcastically refusing to be fucked with. They eventually separated once Kanaya entered the room and all of Rose's attention was suddenly on her instead of her brother. Dave headed back to his own room, then, trying to keep his mind clear, but now that his sister was not chattering away he did not have anything to distract him.

All of a sudden he felt a wave of anxiety flood over him, and he could not help the wanting that bubbled up in him, the memory of her against him only a few hours old. _This is bullshit. _ He thought it again, and he believed more than ever that it was, in fact, complete and utter bullshit. He was going to tell her as much.

He turned around in the direction of Rose's bedroom, and walked fast until her door was in sight. He slowed a bit, considering whether he should go in or not, but as if providing an answer to his dilemma, the door opened and Jade walked out, turning her back to him and proceeding down the hall in the opposite direction. His heart skipped in his chest, and he hesitated only a moment before walking briskly after her. She heard him and turned, a slightly surprised look on her face. "Dave? What-?"

He did not stop until his body was against hers, and he was shaking as his heart thumped hard and fast in his throat. His crushed his lips to hers, his hands firmly on her shoulders and he felt her body tense beneath him before she surrendered to the kiss. When he pulled away, his face was slightly frantic. "Dave, I thought-"

"You thought. You thought what? This is stupid. This is really fucking stupid." He said it, his voice harsher than usual and the strain to keep his features straight was obvious. He took a deep, shuddering breath, as if he were terrifying himself, his hands still on her shoulders. She did not attempt to pull away from him, she just stared at him with a look that was half concern and half fear. She had never seen him like this. She did not think _anyone_ had ever seen him like this. He took another breath, visually attempting to calm himself before he continued. "Yeah. Okay so this isn't exactly prime fucking dating time, and I get that. It is still stupid. We could die, and I think I understand that more than any of us. I've had to face my own death too many times not to understand it, but this… saying we can't do this because it's not the right time. It is never going to be the fucking _right time_, Jade." He took a deep breath, and he visibly shook as he did so, exhaling slowly to balance himself.

"I always had it figured that you would be the one all-in, and I would be the one hesitating, the one trying to be rational about this. It's… ironic." He smirked, but it was empty and sad. "If it's something else, if you just changed your mind…" He stopped and looked at her, and she heard the pleading in his voice.

"No, I –"

"Then what? What is it?" he continued, and he reached up to touch his shades, hesitating before pulling his hands back away as if he had changed his mind about something. "Because I'm not exactly used to putting myself out here like this, but I'll fucking do it if that's what it takes. I'm not wasting any more fucking time." He moved closer as he spoke, and Jade stared at him. Then, without warning, she grabbed his wrist tight in her hand and started to drag him down the hall. He let her lead him, all his questions dead in his throat as he stared at her livid features, her eyes gazing straight forward as she pressed on. She rounded the corner that led to his room, and flung the door open with a mild flick of her wrist and pulled him in, kicking the door closed again behind her. He finally found his voice. "Harley, what the fu-" before he could finish she leapt up onto him, her arms wrapping around his neck and her legs around his waist, and the way she was kissing him was hard and deep and full of need. He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her back, leaning his back against the door.

He felt her tears, then, pressed between her cheeks and his, and he pulled away to look at her. "Fuck, please don't cry." She buried her head in his shoulder, her hands clutching at him as if her life depended on it. He walked over to his bed and sat down, his arms still wrapped around her. "Come on. Just look at me." He said softly, one of his hands finding its way into her dark hair.

She couldn't handle it. She could not deal with the idea of him sacrificing himself for her. She didn't want a hero, she just wanted Dave, but that was not an option for _any_ of them anymore. They all had to risk themselves for one another, and it would be harder, so much harder, if they did this. If it happened now, and they were together and she let him… but of course she was already letting him. She could not help herself but to just let him. He had not let her run; he had barely waited a few hours to try to change her mind. Her affection for him because of that was more than she could stand, but as the images of him dead in the snow flashed in her mind she wanted desperately not to feel them. "You jerk." She whispered, and there was no punch in her voice; it had the same effect as a white flag on a battlefield, a gesture of surrender in wartime.

"Yeah. I know." He responded, pulling her face gently away from his shoulder and then forward to kiss her on the mouth. She pulled him to her, and kissed him harder, falling back onto the bed until his body covered hers. She wanted him, and she relished the feeling of him as she grazed his pale, lightly muscled arms with her lithe fingers. She could feel the pleasurable anxiety low in her stomach, and she could feel his face heating against hers as they continued, kissing more deeply and more passionately as time passed. She wrapped her legs around his hips and pulled him forward until his erection was hard against her, the pressure sending waves of pleasure throughout her body.

He was still for a moment, content with merely kissing her, until she rocked her hips against him and he let out a loud moan in her open mouth. The sound of it made her want him more, and she rocked her hips again. He pulled his mouth away from hers and for a moment stared at her, breathing heavily. Then he pressed his cheek flush with her own and moved against her, his slim hips rubbing against her soft, curvaceous thighs. He rocked against her, soon finding a rhythm, and she began to move in sync with him, feeling the buildup of heat and pressure between her legs. He was breathing hard, small moans escaping him from time to time. She was louder, and she gasped and keened every time she felt him brush against her.

He sped up, his moans coming louder as he did and he was clutching her, holding her, with a desperation and need that echoed the noises that came out of him. She felt him close his mouth against her neck, and he sucked lightly, and ran his tongue over her salty skin. He took his hand and put it up under her shirt, then, and almost clumsily he grabbed the bottom of her bra, pushing it up over her breast so his fingers could graze the sensitive, uncovered skin. He touched her lightly to begin, but soon his entire hand enveloped her breast, his fingers teasing the skin around her nipple, and she felt a heavy wave of pleasure shake her as his deft fingers moved over her. She was close, so close to coming and she rubbed herself harder against him. The sound of his heavy breathing, the feel of his fingers on her bare skin, it was all too much and she couldn't take it anymore. She screamed out in pleasure, her body shaking with an intense orgasm.

She clutched onto him and continued her movements, rocking her hips faster and faster until she felt him shudder against her. "J-Jade, stop I'm going to-" She pressed her mouth to his and she could feel him moaning against her lips, grasping her tight as he released. He seemed on the verge of collapsing, and she ran her fingers through his hair as his body shook. He held her tightly for a few moments before pulling his mouth away from hers. He was a deep red, and his mouth was open as he gasped for air. He glanced down for a moment and then back up to her, and she smiled at him.

"I can't believe I fucking did that." He gasped, leaning in to kiss her neck. "Jesus… _fuck_." She did not answer him, but instead she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled his face to hers, kissing him sweetly as he shuddered, the last outgoing tide of pleasure rocking his body.

* * *

******And then I jizzed in my pants. (I could not fucking help myself. I'm sorry. I just ruined this whole chapter by making that joke.)**

**You guys are really upping the ante with these comments, I am genuinely impressed! And flattered, of course. :) Thanks so much. As for this fic, I think I decided that I am claiming this as an AU section between Act 6 Intermission 2 and whenever the kids actually eventually meet up with the Alpha kids, maybe slightly further along than that. This is an instance in which the meteor and Jade and John's ship collide and the kids continue the last bit of their journey together, the impact causing the meteor to move slow enough for Jack to catch up with them (as you have all seen). Despite what may -actually- happen in the comic. I should have waited until I found out what happens, but seriously? I couldn't do that. Are you even kidding me? You would not have wanted me to anyway.**

**Now I have to finish this painting. I am a busy woman you guys! I have so much to do! But writing is too much fun and I won't stop.**

**-CS**


	16. Chapter 16

Jade looked up at him, he was holding himself up on his hands and staring in the direction of her neck, unmoving, unflinching, and barely breathing. There was either something transfixing him, or it was an empty gaze merely happening to be directed to that spot. Without seeing his eyes, she could only speculate. She remembered the visible scar that was there, the memento of her near-demise, and she found herself growing slightly anxious. "Dave?"

"Sup." His voice sounded normal, probably a little too normal considering what they had just done. There was not an uncontrolled muscle in his body, and he didn't move except for his mouth around the single word of response.

"You alright?" she raised her hand to touch his cheek, and he did not flinch away from her. She realized that she had been worried he would.

"Yup." This thin, monosyllabic response provided little comfort to her anxiety. She put her other hand on his face and gently tilted it to look at her instead of whatever he had been so focused on. His muscles seemed to tense a bit as she turned his gaze.

"You want to maybe relax a little?" She asked with a small smile on her face. She could not read his expression. His mouth was a straight line, and his face was in shadow so his eyes remained a mystery behind his aviators. The only movement she could see was the gentle rise and fall of his chest when he breathed, slow and steady. She wanted to know, it was killing her not to know how he felt. She slowly moved her hands up toward his glasses, and she heard him take a quick breath, his mouth twitching slightly as if he wanted to say something. When her fingers touched his shades, his brain seemed to catch up with what was going on and he raised his hand to touch hers, but he did not pull her away. He wasn't going to stop her, she realized, but she knew his touch was his thinly veiled gesture of pleading that she might change her mind. She also knew that he was aware that there was no way that would happen, and so it was also surrender.

She removed his shades gently and his blonde hair was falling in front of his face without them to push it back. She nearly started to cry, because she could not think of any other response for what she was seeing. The features of his face seemed softer without his dark shades. His big, blood red eyes were soft and sad, and made him seem astonishingly vulnerable, even as the rest of his face remained straight in carefully controlled stoicism. They were heavy lidded, and his blonde eyelashes were long and caught the light when he blinked. They were the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. _ He_ was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen; beautiful, soft, and so _achingly_ sad.

He had crashed, and hard, after the pleasure had ebbed away, leaving him with a mess of things that he had been easily able to push to the back of his mind in the heat of everything; the heat of feeling her against him, her body arching against his in ecstasy. He should have been happy; he should have been downright elated, his own orgasm pulsing through his body more intensely than he had ever experienced in his life. But he wasn't. Once the heat was gone from him, once all the pleasure receded and his mind was clear, everything bad inched its way back in. There was a twinge of guilt, first. Their first real sexual act and he wished he had handled it with a little more sense than to let himself go off the way he had. That was nothing compared to the awful feeling that gripped him immediately afterward. He caught himself staring at that scar on her neck, and he was hunched over her the same way he had been, and all of a sudden it had been blood and death and fear all over again. He felt like he could not breathe; his eyes unable to pry themselves away from the tender pink scar tissue.

Her voice had pulled him back, but slowly. Her hands were on his face, and then they were touching his glasses, and he had panicked but he had let her anyway because even as a part of him screamed for her to stop, a smaller but more powerful part of him did not. His eyes were the only part of him he could not control, the part of him that was the most vulnerable. He realized in that split second when his hand had shot up to meet hers that he _wanted _to show that to her. He wanted her to understand that this was not just physical attraction or proximity or hormones or a shallow infatuation. It was more. It was because she was Jade, and she had always, _always_ been something more to him, and he had only just realized it when it had almost been too late. He did not trust himself to find the strength to say it, but he could surrender this barrier. He could do this one thing. It was a start.

The glasses slid off, and then she just stared at him. He could not hold her gaze for longer than a couple of seconds, after which he lowered his eyes, looking everywhere else but back into hers. He caught a glimpse of her neck again, and he had to jerk himself away in an attempt to keep himself from getting caught up in a memory he could not presently deal with. As he stared back at her eyes he realized with a jolt that he was not dodging the bullet. He remembered her pale skin, the blood, the hint of green of her dead half-lidded eyes. The horror of that moment melded with his very present fear of how easy it would be to lose her again; to lose _any _of them. He felt his eyes watering and he _really wanted his fucking glasses back._ He pressed his eyes shut and turned his head from her, trying to hide his face. He realized it was probably making matters worse and not better.

"Dave? Dave what's wrong?" she pushed herself up on her elbows and moved her head awkwardly to look him in the face, even as he tried to turn his head away.

"I… Fine." He managed to choke out with most of his stoicism intact.

"No you're not. Look at me…" She said it gently, running one hand along his cheek and into his hair, brushing it away from his face. He did not move, his body was shaking as he held back sobs. He had cried before in front of her, silent tears with his eyes safely hidden behind his dark shades, but this was really fucking different. Sobs were threatening to wrack his body, and it was becoming harder and harder to breathe without an unrestrained whimper escaping his lips. The longer he sat there, the worse the feeling got. It was completely overwhelming him. He knew he would not be able to get a single word out without the last of his control falling to pieces.

She ran her fingers through his hair, trying to sooth him, her face flush against his own. Then, out of some desperation, or some fleeting hope that it would do some good, he kissed her, and she responded forcefully, pulling his face to hers with a tiny, quick intake of breath, and then he was completely gone. He choked out a sob into her mouth, and instead of pulling away she drew his face into the crook of her neck, pressing her face into his hair and kissing him over and over. His body was violently shaking with sobs, every one viciously ripped from him and there was nothing he could do to stop it. "Fuck." He sobbed out, desperate and extraordinarily angry with himself for losing it so completely. "Fuck. Fuck this." She just kept holding him, stroking his hair, trying to calm him down. She was not even asking him what was wrong anymore. He could not have answered her if he wanted to.

When he thought he could manage to speak, he tried, and his voice was rough and broken. "I-I'm sorry," was all he managed to say. He had no idea what else there was.

"No. Dave… no. It's fine. I don't care. Just… what's wrong?"

"God, f-fucking everything." He said angrily, attempting to hold back sobs as he did so. He grimaced at his own words. "That was p-pathetic. _This_ is fucking _pathetic_." He laughed cruelly at himself, tears still streaming from his eyes. He took a deep breath, and it seemed to legitimately help him to steady himself. "Losing you… I'm scared. I hate this game." He admitted, and then he took a breath pulled his face away from her neck and stared straight into her eyes. "Just please kiss me."

She did not hesitate, only wrapped her arms around him and pulled him onto her, kissing the tears away from his beautiful, uncovered eyes, and then crushing her mouth to his. Every awful feeling in him melted away and he simply relished the feel of her body against his, the heat of her face, the taste of her mouth. He moved to kiss her neck, running his hands under her shirt, gripping the sides of her waist as he bit and licked at her warm skin. He moved his face down to kiss her collarbone and her throat, and every sound she made, every breath she took made him harder, made him want more of her. He directed all of his fear of losing her into appreciating her then in that moment. He wanted to make her feel amazing.

He began to push her shirt up, and she breathed heavily as he kissed her stomach. Once her shirt was over her breasts, he moved back to her face and bit her softly on the ear and said in a breathy voice, "Raise your arms." She complied, pushing herself up and raising her arms as he pulled her shirt gently over her head. When it was off, he threw it on the ground and wrapped his arms around her, feeling her shiver as his bare skin touched hers. Her face was flushed red, and so he slowed down, kissing her softly down her cheeks and at the edges of her mouth. "Trust me." he breathed against her skin before closing his mouth over hers again, hearing her whimper sweetly at the contact.

He ran his hands lightly over her bare back, starting at the back of her neck and moving down, passing over the strap of her bra and moving to touch her lower back, right above the waistband of the thin shorts she wore. She was breathing hard and radiating heat. He moved his hands around to touch her at the base of her neck and gently eased himself away from her so that he could look her in the eyes. It was already easier to meet her gaze, though he felt exposed and vulnerable. He touched her face, stroking it gently as he let himself drink her in. "Why did you stop." She breathed, her voice almost a whisper.

"Taking my time." He answered simply.

* * *

**"CS, what are you doing with this goddamn story" All the fans breathed, their collective voices almost a whisper.**

**"Taking my time" She answered simply.**

**-CS**


	17. Chapter 17

**(NSFW)**

Though she was obviously strong from fighting, she was also soft and curvy. He touched her shoulders and moved his hands down her arms, and then to her hips, brushing his fingers across her skin to make her shake and whimper. He looked at her body, but he kept returning his gaze to her face. She had grown into her teeth but they were still a little too large for her small mouth. He liked it. To him it was perfect, it made her look like Jade, and Jade was what he wanted. Her features were soft, and her face long. Her lips and cheeks a deep rosy shade, her eyes the brightest green. Her long, silky, dark hair fell over her shoulders and back in waves, thick and unruly and everything about her was striking and flawless. He could not look at her enough.

He brushed his fingers over the outside of her bra, and she gasped, moving her body against his hands, wanting more. He happily obliged her and started teasing her nipples more enthusiastically, pinching and stroking until they were hard and she was breathing deep and fast and moaning in pleasure. He pressed his face into her neck and sucked lightly, grazing his teeth over her flushed skin as he moved his hands around her back to fiddle with the hook of her bra. _Seriously how the fuck do these things work? _He tried and failed with the clasp for about thirty seconds before he heard her giggle lightly. He blushed; he had never unhooked a bra before. She pulled away from him and reached her own arms behind her back, undoing the clasp in one easy motion, and removing the last piece of cloth between him and her bare skin.

He felt himself pressing against the inside of his pants, pleasure and excitement rocking through him as he admired her. He must have been staring for too long, because she began to blush and tentatively grabbed his hand, pulling it toward her to touch her small, perky breast. He responded immediately, moving in to kiss her hard and deep, taking her lower lip between his own and sucking hard as he ran his tongue along the swollen skin. Both of his hands were now on her bare chest grasping and caressing and teasing. He was unbelievably turned on, and every time she moaned deep in her throat or whined in pleasure he felt the heat between his legs grow steadily more intense. His mind was a haze. His only focus was her, her body, the sound of her, the feel of her. He wanted to press her bare flesh against his own, so he moved his hands down to her hips, gripping her firmly and pressing his chest against hers.

He could feel the warmth of her soft skin and feel her heartbeat and the rise and fall of her chest as she struggled to catch her breath and it made his own heart speed and his own breath come is quick, short pants. He brushed his tongue against her lips, and she opened herself to him and he could taste her moaning into his mouth. He began to kiss down her throat, and then her chest, and finally his lips were pressed against the soft skin of her breast, his mouth closed around her nipple, tonguing the tip of it experimentally as she writhed beneath him. He wanted more, and so he sucked harder, circling his tongue and occasionally biting the hard tip lightly making her body shake as she cried out in pleasure. One of his hands was tangled with hers, their fingers interlaced as she gripped at him, white knuckled and overwhelmed. His other hand was moving softly over her flat stomach, moving slowly lower until his fingers brushed the waistband of her shorts. He barely tucked a fingertip below the belt, moving it back and forth as her thighs twitched and she whimpered shakily at the teasing. "D-Dave…" she breathed, and he lifted his face away from her chest and moved up to look her in the eyes.

She was flushed deeply and the look in her eyes was worried and unsure, and so he moved the hand on her stomach up to touch her cheek gently, his other hand still intertwined in hers, a thumb running absently over her knuckles. He stroked her cheek gently and forced himself to meet her gaze, trying to read what she was thinking. "We can stop." He said, and he meant it. He could not ignore the way her bare skin was flush against his, and the heat exchanged between them, her heavy breathing and the aching pleasure that was pulsing through his body, and he wanted this more than he could express but he would wait until she was ready.

She stared at him for a moment, and then brought her face forward to kiss him gently on the edge of his mouth. "N-no. I want this. I want you to." She whispered against his face.

"I won't unless you are sure." He said, forcing himself to recognize the fear laced in her words.

She pushed him back to look him full in the face and she repeated, "I_ want _you to." Her words were still shaky, but resolute, and there was trust in her green eyes as they stared back into his red ones. He crushed his lips to hers, and just kissed her. He kissed her for a long time before he let his hands work their way back down to her waist, and he could feel her heart beating a mile a minute against his chest. He moved his mouth away from hers and started to place small, sweet kisses over her cheeks and eyes and nose, and she seemed to calm down a bit, her body relaxing against his. He continued to kiss her softly as he moved his hand slowly beneath the band of her shorts, and she shook every time his fingertips brushed closer to her, gasping and gripping his hand tighter.

His digits brushed over her lightly. She was dripping wet and the heat radiated off of her in waves. He was sure he felt her buck slightly as he tentatively pressed his fingers down. She whined against him, and her breathing went hard and erratic. He pressed his mouth to hers and ran his tongue over her lips. She opened to him, and as he kissed her he slowly began to move his fingers over her swollen heat. "Ahhh, God, a little softer." She breathed, a moan escaping her as she said it. He did what she said, lifting his fingers to brush against her, focusing more on the movement than the pressure. She moved her face to his ear and took it in her mouth, and she breathed hot against it, a whimper in the back of her throat. With her mouth against his ear, he could gauge her responses better, and began taking cues based on the sounds she made, and the way she moved against his hand.

He finally found a rhythm, moving his fingers in a circular motion, occasionally stopping to push the tips of his dripping wet fingers barely into her as she cried out and pressed wet kisses against his neck. Every time he went a little further, pressing up against the inside of her as she writhed in his arms and bucked her hips. Sometimes it seemed to hurt her, her brow furrowing slightly, and he would pull out of her and kiss her gently against her jaw and neck until her body would relax again. He rubbed her and teased her and listened to her moan until she seemed to be lost in it, her responses loud and breathing hard against him. Her body begged him to go faster as she pressed her fingers into his skin. He stopped alternating and focused only on the rhythmic circular motions, and as she breathed harder he put his face against her neck and bit down enough for her to scream out in a mixture of pleasure and surprise. He sucked hard, his fingers still at work keeping the pace as she rocked her hips and struggled to breathe through the sweet noises that were coming unconstrained from her shaking mouth.

When she seemed as though she were at the apex of her pleasure, he moved his mouth down to envelope her nipple, and he bit down, his tongue moving against her and his fingers moving faster and more aggressively. She screamed out, and her legs pressed together over his hand, holding him there as she grasped at him desperately, her body rocking and shaking against him. She rode out her pleasure, falling backward as it receded, her body still shaking slightly and her breathing coming fast and erratic. He pulled his hand away from her heat and brought it up to his lips, and to her obvious surprise he put them into his open mouth and sucked them clean, his eyes staring over her heaving chest and her green eyes still glazed with pleasure and exhaustion. As he pulled the last of his digits from his mouth, he grinned and said "Sweet." She blushed deeply at that, and looked away from him, unable to completely suppress the smile that came unwittingly to her lips.

He kissed her then, a sweet, closed-mouthed kiss on her swollen, pink lips. He was beaming, he could not help himself. She was beautiful in her ecstasy, beads of sweat running down her flushed skin and her eyes soft and shy, too scared to look into his. He could feel how achingly hard he was, and he wanted badly for her to press her hand against him, but he was afraid to push her too far. He would take care of it later if he had to. He leaned in to kiss her again, pressing his nose against hers and nuzzling to try and pull her out of her embarrassment. She smiled at him and kissed the tip of his nose sweetly, and he was a little embarrassed about how un-ironically he enjoyed the cuteness of the gesture. He tried to brush it off but she could tell immediately that he liked it and kissed him again, giggling a little against his skin.

Then she started to kiss him down his neck, and he groaned a little as he leaned into her. She ran her tongue experimentally against his collarbone and he shuddered noticeably, and the heat between his legs was pulsing uncomfortably against the restraint of his black jeans. If she kept going he was going to find it very difficult to restrain himself. He also remembered, suddenly, that he should really clean himself up. In the heat of everything he had forgotten, but it would certainly be awkward and he wanted to excuse himself so he could wash up and change. He started to push himself up off the bed and she looked at him with a worried expression.

"I've got to shower. It won't take long." He said, turning his face away from her as she pulled some blankets over her chest, suddenly very aware of how exposed she was.

"Did I do something wrong?" she asked, and she looked sad as she met his eyes. Shaking his head, he leaned back over to kiss her, running the long fingers of his clean hand through her hair. He pulled back away after a moment and walked to the bathroom door, opening it and walking in without a word.

Once he closed the door behind him, he groped at the button to his jeans with trembling hands, ripping them off as quickly as he could manage as he pulsed with anticipation. He was breathing hard, and he had to work to suppress the urge to cry out. He went to the shower and turned it on full blast, but did not even enter it before he closed his hand around himself. He was still slightly sticky from before, and his boxers were ruined, but he was beyond caring. He was so hot, and as he started to pump himself he put his arm out in front of him to prop himself against the shower door. He thought of the way she had sounded as the orgasm had wracked her body, the way she shuddered and clutched at him, and he let out an audible moan as he moved his hand faster, his breath catching in his throat.

He was so wrapped up in his own pleasure, the feeling that was pulsing through his body, that he did not hear the door open. He did not hear her approach him, and he was surprised to feel her arms around him, her face pressed against his back, laying soft kisses against his hot, damp skin. His hand fell away from himself, and he felt her hand wrap around him in its place, her small fingers twitching against his bare skin.

"Why did you leave?" she breathed, and she started to move her hand as she said it. He could not contain himself and he moaned in pleasure. It was so much better than when it had been his own hand. She was clumsy, and she had very little rhythm, but the fact that it was _her_, that it was Jade with her hand touching him this way, made it feel amazing. It was the most intense sensation he had ever experienced. He was lost in it.

"I-I… Aaaah god." It was all he could manage, she was pumping him harder, and his body was shaking with pleasure. He was so close, and he started thrusting his hips into her small hand, breathing hard and loud as she placed wet kisses down his spine, her teeth grazing the skin. He felt himself shudder, and he was at the apex of his pleasure. He leaned all of his weight on his hand, still pressed against the foggy glass of the shower door, as he felt the huge wave of ecstasy hit him. He nearly doubled over as his legs went nearly limp under him. She pulled her hand away as he screamed out, and in desperation he took his own hand and continued to pump himself as he shuddered through his intense orgasm. As the pleasure ebbed away and he was able to steady himself on his own legs again, he turned her and saw her blushing hot and red to the tips of her ears. He did not say anything as he wrapped his arms around her, tangling his clean hand in her hair, his face pressed against her forehead as he kissed her over and over.

* * *

**Yeah... okay so I'm like... pretty tipsy right now. Maaaaaaybe a lil more (wonk) I finished my last painting, got it all up in the gallery for the senior exhibition... and I sold one of my paintings to the Dean of Art! So i'm like... celebrating and... stuff. So... if the last couple of the paragraphs are a little... wonky... I apologize. the rest I wrote totes sober so it should be fine. I'm like... hehe. anyway. I am so happy with the response for the last chapter. I love writing angsty stuff, thats how teenagers are anyway... and I know I feel like I'm overdoing it but I mean I like that stuff so I figure you guys like it too i dunno I should stop typing now.**

**Edit:/ Yeah okay I went over it and fixed some stuff. Sorry, I had a bit too much wine and I did not think I would get QUITE as gone as I was. I really am happy with the response to this fic, I love this pair and I want to do them justice as best I can. Thank you all so much for reading and commenting, it means a lot to me.**

**-CS**


	18. Chapter 18

**(NSFW)**

He held her for a long while, at one point reaching down to tuck himself back into his boxers as nonchalantly as he could manage. She had wrapped her arms around his lithe body to press her fingers into his skin, both of them already damp from the steam that was accumulating in the room. He kissed her sweetly once again on the forehead before finally pulling back away from her.

"I really gotta clean up. I wasn't being shifty about that or anything." He reached up to tuck her dark hair behind her ear, his fingers lingering there as he stared at her wide-eyed and flushed face.

"Y-yeah! Yeah, right, I'm sorry! I just…" she smiled shyly as her eyes darted around the room. He grinned at her and leaned in to kiss her again, the gesture seeming to calm her down a little.

"I know." He said simply, giving her a squeeze before she pulled away and turned to leave the room.

He stood still until she closed the door, and then stepped out of his boxers into the shower as he let out a shuddering breath he had been holding in for a good while. He cleaned himself as fast as he could, wanting to get back to her with as little delay as he could manage. He removed the bandages from his arms and torso to find that they had almost completely healed already thanks to his resilient God Tier status and general badassery. Once he was done, he realized with some embarrassment he did not seem to have anything to change into, so he wrapped a towel around himself and walked out. At first glance he did not see Jade, and for a moment he was worried that she had left. Upon closer inspection he realized that she had actually curled up on the floor in the makeshift bed from the night before, and he had to suppress a laugh. He picked up his sunglasses first and the familiarity and comfort of them on his face was welcome after having gone without them for so long. He walked over to his pile of clean clothes and picked out a pair of black boxers and his original red record t-shirt, bearing the broken record his brother had sliced in half during their final fight on the roof.

He slid the shirt on first, and then tried to pull his boxers on beneath the towel. He managed to get them most of the way on before he began to lose his balance, and in a fit of utter stupidity he tried to plant his elevated foot behind him which unbalanced his other leg as the cloth of his boxers caught between them. He hit the floor with a loud bang as he cursed under his breath. He heard her giggling, then, the sound muffled by blankets she was no-doubtedly pressing her face into to try and hide her reaction. He kept a straight face as he lay on his back, quickly pulling his boxers the rest of the way up in case she decided to check on him.

"Dave! Are you okay?" she said, still trying to repress a fit of giggling with her hand.

"I'm cool." He said in impressive monotone even as a blush crept up his face. He still did not move; instead choosing to lie on the floor facing the ceiling. He heard the rustle of blankets and the sound of footsteps coming toward him, and then before he knew it she was staring down at him with a wide grin on her face. "Sup?" he asked, as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.

"You comfortable there on the floor? You sure you don't want to move to the bed?" She had crouched down and was leaning right over him while running her hands over his wet hair.

"Nah, girl. This is swank." He said, grabbing her hand in his as he said it. "You should join me." She giggled and began to situate herself against his side as he wrapped his arms around her small frame. After a few moments of silent cuddling, Dave finally turned to face Jade whose eyes were closed as she pressed herself against him. He kissed her gently at the edge of her mouth, and she returned it without hesitation, nuzzling his face sweetly before he pulled away again. He was not actually going to make her sleep on the floor, so without a word he began to push himself up. He picked her up the same way he had the previous night and walked her to the bed.

"Is this going to become a habit? You carrying me around all the time?" He smirked down at her as he climbed into the bed and pulled her close.

"Sure. I'm a Knight, right? Seems in character."

She smiled hugely at him and kissed him lightly on the jaw. "My Knight." She whispered before closing her eyes to sleep.

_All yours_.

They woke up the next morning tangled up in one another, neither of them willing to be the first one to leave. They kissed until they ran out of breath, and then they kissed some more. They might not have even left the room if it were not for John showing up to break them apart and reminding them that he had missed Dave too and wanted to spend some time catching up with his best bro. Jade took the opportunity to find Rose and she spent the rest of the day dodging questions pertaining to her and Dave's budding relationship. She refused to say a word about it, but Rose read through her coyness and deduced more than enough based on her pointed silences and the uncontrolled blushing. Rose was truly a therapeutic force to be reckoned with, or perhaps it was just that Jade was merely incredibly transparent.

When Jade finally saw Dave again, she could not suppress the huge smile that came to her face. He smirked back at her, cool as always but still obviously more generous with his affections than he normally would be. The four of the kids joined up with Kanaya, Karkat and Terezi and together they all spent the rest of the evening making jokes and telling stories. There was also a tension between them that went unspoken as they all kept themselves alert for another potential attack from Noir, but it seemed as though the white creature was keeping him away and the day passed uneventfully. They all hoped silently that she would take Noir out herself, but none of them really believed they would be so lucky.

Rose talked about the new group of kids, and mentioned that she, Dave, and John should think about contacting their respective ecto-relatives. She maintained that her interest in them was purely business, but it was obvious that being able to talk to the teenage version of her mother had brightened her mood at least slightly. Jade knew that despite the problems she had with her deceased mother, she had loved her a great deal and felt guilty over her death.

They all finally parted ways, and together Jade and Dave headed back to Dave's bedroom. The door was barely closed before they were on each other, their grasping hands unable to stay still as they clutched at one another. They could not press themselves close enough together, gasping and groping and kissing messily as they ached for each other. Jade pulled off his glasses, and he did not even think to stop her. She stared into his eyes, big and expressive and staring right back into hers. "I don't know why you keep them covered. Your eyes are so beautiful Dave!" he merely grinned at her, pulling her into his arms and crushing her into the soft blankets of his bed.

The next days passed in a blur, and the longer that Noir went unseen, the more relaxed everyone seemed to feel. Jade and Dave spent every night with one another, for a while not going much further than they had the second night they had spent together. They had come to an unspoken agreement that they should at least try to slow down, if only just so that they could control themselves a little better. Every night, without fail, Dave would pick up Jade in his long arms and carry her to the bed before pressing his mouth to hers, twining their tongues together as he made her writhe beneath him with his talented fingers. Then, when he had brought her to the peak of her pleasure, she would move to unbutton the front of his pants, her small hand teasing him relentlessly as he breathed hard against her neck. When she wrapped her hand around him, it would take all of his control not to thrust his hips, his body shaking with anticipation and his head foggy with lust.

She loved to watch him in the heat of his pleasure, staring into his wide, red eyes as he moaned and blushed, small beads of sweat running down his face. Her eyes would search over him as she moved her hand against him faster, and he would twist his fingers into her dark hair and call out softly, whining deep in his throat. When he released, he would clutch at her and she would press her mouth to his, squeezing him in her hand as the hot mess ran sticky against her fingers. He would hold her to him for a few moments, kissing her hair as she buried her face in his neck, sometimes humming songs beneath his breath that would vibrate in his chest against her face. Once they had both stopped breathing hard he would grab tissues from beside his bed and silently clean her as she stared into his eyes, her cheeks always a little flushed with heat and her lips swollen and red from kissing. He was getting used to her looking at his eyes, and he even found that he liked it. He liked for her to see him this way. It was the first time in his life he was not afraid of giving himself completely up to someone else.

Not if it was her.

* * *

**This chapter was kinda tricky, I'm trying to ease into a slight time skip. I have the ending planned out now and I'm trying to figure out the best way to pace it. This chapter is also a bit short, sorry about that! Next one should be longer.**

**Sorry this update was so slow, I was very busy this weekend and then last night I got HELLA SICK BRO, and I spent all day today sleeping and being miserable. Hopefully I will be able to update again tomorrow as long as these meds start working and I don't have to rip my own head off. I'm actually surprised I got this one done. Anyway, as per usual, thanks so much for comments and faves and stuff! Makes me so happy when I get new notifications. **

**Another shout out to Air-Head, I am surprised that you think this fic is guy friendly! Haha, I never really thought of it as being something a dude would enjoy but I'm happy you think so. :) Thanks for commenting all the time by the way! XD**

**-CS**


	19. Chapter 19

**(NSFW)**

Days on the meteor were all but inseparable from the nights, both dark and endless in the void that they drifted through, but Dave always knew exactly what time it was. A week had passed, and Jade had taken up a permanent residence in his room, and her belongings were strewn about everywhere; her Squiddles, various potted plants, and her flowery smelling clothes that she kept folded next to his haphazardly messy pile. He complained to her offhandedly about her taking over the room but when she giggled and kissed him he would immediately shut up and take her in his arms for another hug. He didn't actually care, he was just keeping face. She knew it.

The most noticeable addition to his room was Jade herself, and he had grown terribly used to the feeling of her beside him. He would wake every time she climbed out of bed in the middle of the night to head to the restroom, and would not be able to fall back to sleep until she crawled back into his bed to press her face against his collar, her hands taking his and pulling him closer to her. Once she had his arms situated around her the way she liked, she would kiss him lightly on the jaw before relaxing to fall back to sleep. He always smirked privately at the borderline possessive behavior she only exhibited when she believed him to be incoherent enough to put up with it.

At 4:37 on their eighth night together she left the bed, and he waited for her as he always did, but when at 4:51 she did not return he knew something was wrong. He had been wearing his glasses less and less often when it was just the two of them, so he did not have them on and did not waste time looking for them before pushing himself out of the bed. The light in the bathroom was on, and the door was slightly ajar. When he approached the door, he could not hear anything, so he knocked on the wall beside the door to alert her to his presence. When she did not answer him, he slid in silently and found her sitting against the far wall, her legs pulled up to her chin and her face pressed against them so he could not see her eyes. She did not look hurt, and she was not crying as far as he could tell, but the tiny figure she struck against the gray tiles of the bathroom still filled him with anxiety.

"Jade? What are you doing?" he asked, his tone soft with concern. She looked up at him then, and his heart dropped a little. She was not crying, but she had been. Her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy, and the skin around them was red and splotchy. He moved easily to her side, leaning against the wall as he pulled her into his arms. "The hell?" he asked as he kissed her once on the side of her face. She stared blankly forward for a few seconds before moving to look at him.

"Nothing! I'm okay." He really had to laugh at it, despite how sad it made him.

"That's my line. Try again."

"I just can't sleep. Sometimes the memories in the dream bubbles are nice, even when they aren't at least it's better than void. I can't stand it. I was awake on Prospit for most of my life, and so when there is just… nothing... I just can't sleep anymore tonight, Dave."

"I should get us some coffee then." He responded easily, but made no move to do anything but continue to cradle her in his arms.

"No! You should at least sleep some! I can find a way to entertain myself."

"Nope." She moved her mouth as if to argue with him, but when he met her eyes she closed up in silent agreement. She was not going to be able to talk him out of it. He stood up, her still wrapped in his arms for a few moments before she set her feet straight against the cold floor. "I'll be back. Don't mess up the place any. I mean it." He didn't. She nodded at him anyway, as if she were taking him seriously, and followed him silently to the door. She stood there silently as she watched him disappear down the dark hallway.

He returned a few minutes later with two steaming cups of coffee in his hands, one of which was already half empty. He backed into the room, the door still slightly ajar, which he was grateful for. Jade was sitting on the edge of the bed staring off into space, but as soon as she heard him she turned to face him, planting her feet on the floor. He cocked an eyebrow at her, and he noticed to his amusement that one of her fuzzy white dog ears twitched a little. "You forgot your shades, cool kid. Someone could have seen you." He snorted out a laugh, inwardly glad that he had not run into anyone on his trip.

"It's not a thing," he told her nonchalantly, holding out one of the warm mugs to her. She stood up and took it slowly from his hands, all the while avoiding direct eye contact with him. She held it up to her face and breathed in, her eyes fluttering shut for half a second before pulling away again. She set the mug down on the table without taking a single sip, and turned back to him silently. Then, before he could ask her what was up, she raised both of her hands, blushing a little as she stared him straight in the eyes. He felt a jolt of excitement rush through him, staring at her for a few seconds before setting his own cup down on the surface closest to him.

He moved to her quickly and silently, running his long fingers under her shirt and pushing it up in one smooth motion over her head. He pressed his body to hers without hesitation, running his hands along her flushed skin and kissing her neck and shoulders as she breathed heavily against him. She gripped the edges of his shirt and began to tug upward. He forced himself to pull away from her long enough to let her tear the cloth from him, and then he was back on her, both of their hearts beating hard in their chests. She pressed her hands against the curve of his lower back, and moved slowly beneath the waistband of his strained boxers. He moaned into her mouth, and she took the opportunity to brush her tongue teasingly against his.

He pulled at the band of her pale olive bra, running a finger beneath the cloth back and forth as she dug her nails into his skin. She had her mouth on his neck, and he could not suppress the loud whine that came from him as she brushed his flushed skin with her tongue, her hands inching lower and around to the front of his body. Her fingers touched up against his inner thighs and he pulsed with anticipation. She was so achingly close to him now that he wanted to grab her hand and put her against him, but he resisted, letting the pleasure of the anticipation wash over him. He was surprised when he felt her hand receding back to the band of his boxers, but then she grabbed at them with both hands and tugged them down to his ankles before he realized what was happening. She pulled away from him and stared into his eyes, and he stepped the rest of the way out of his clothes. She bent down, then, her hands pressed against his shaking legs, and it finally dawned on him what she was going to do.

"Jade a-are you seriously- seriously going to- aaaahh..." He could not speak anymore as she closed her mouth around him, her tongue going to work against his sensitive skin. She pulled back off of him and licked the tip experimentally, and he moaned hard and put his hands out behind him to keep himself from falling over. She took him back into her mouth, and as she slid down on him her teeth grazed him a little uncomfortably, but not enough to ruin the pleasure of it. "C-careful… aaahhh… teeth…" she fidgeted a bit to get her lips around her teeth and pushed further down on him, and the sensation was completely overwhelming. He tangled one of his hands in her hair, his fingers twisting and grasping as she started to move up and down against him. It was painfully slow at first, and he had to resist his immediate compulsion to thrust into her mouth. She sped up after a short while, and began to experiment more with her tongue as he breathed hard and loud, moaning deep in his throat when she took him in particularly deep.

He felt the pleasure peaking fast and he knew he would not last much longer at the rate she was going, so he leaned over and gently pulled himself out of her mouth. She looked at him confused, but he smirked at her and pulled her to her feet. "You can finish me later," he said simply as he picked her up and walked over to the bed. He lay her down, and immediately moved his hands to the edge of her shorts and grabbed the waist of both them and her panties to pull them slowly down her soft, curvy legs.

Once he had completely removed them, he brought his face to her stomach and began kissing and biting softly down her skin, his fingers between her legs as he made her whine and shudder against him. As he brought his mouth to cover the wet heat between her legs, he stuck a finger inside her and moved it around to find her spot. When he felt her hips buck up against him, he knew he was there, and he began to gently knead it as he sucked her swollen button between his lips. She cried out, and his face was soon dripping as he tongued her rhythmically, pressing another finger inside her as she shuddered helplessly beneath him. He reached his free hand up to cup her breast, brushing her nipple through the thin cloth of her bra. He worked her for a good while before her breaths began to hitch in her throat, and he knew she was close. He moved the hand that had been on her breast between his own legs and began stroking himself as he continued to pleasure her. It did not take long to get himself hard again, and even less to get himself to the peak of his pleasure, still worked to the brink from before.

As she gripped at his hair, he knew it was time, and pulled his face and hand away from her as she moaned her displeasure loudly. He only caught a glimpse of the indignation on her flushed face before he pressed himself hard against her, rubbing himself rigid and fast against the lips of her tender heat. He cried out first, the pleasure shooting through his body almost violently, and then a few seconds later she curled up into his body, gripping him almost painfully tight as she herself whined in intense ecstasy. Both of them grasped at each other for a long time, shaking the remains of their pleasure out through their tired limbs. There was a hot, sticky mess between their stomachs, and once Dave had the strength he reached down to grab his shirt off the floor and quickly wiped the mess away as she breathed heavily, staring at him with a small smile on her face.

He dressed her first, wishing that they could stay the way they were but knowing it was a bad idea. She let him push her shorts and panties back up her legs, and then sat up to let him pull her shirt over her head. He kissed her sweetly before going to find his own clothes, hardly able to find his boxers in the dark room. Once he had them back on, he began to look around for a clean shirt to pull over him. He didn't have time, though.

The room lit up in green light, and he heard Jade yelling his name before he felt a sharp sting against his bare shoulder. He gripped it hard as the flow of blood seeped fast and unrelentingly through his white knuckled fingers. It didn't hurt, but he was pretty sure that was just the shock of it and that he did not have much time before that wore off. The adrenaline was pumping through him fast as he retrieved his sword from his sylladex, holding a little clumsily as his arm shook violently at the weight. He managed to block the next blow Noir threw his way before another crash revealed the white "twin" from before, and she rounded on Noir faster than it took Dave to fully register her appearance. He slumped against the wall, and Jade was at his side immediately. She pressed one of her hands over his own, trying to ebb the flow of blood that was now drenching the right side of his body. "Dave you have to get out of here!" she said, her voice shaking slightly with impatience and fear.

"Fuck no, I'm not leaving you." He said obstinately, even as he felt his head starting to spin from blood loss.

"Idiot," she said to him, and the frustration showed freely on her face as she raised her hand to focus her power on Noir. She began to pulse with green light, and he took the opportunity to try and push himself back up on his feet. He realized that he was being incredibly stupid, but he tried anyway, pressing his eyes closed to try and shut out the dizziness that was threatening to overtake him. She turned back to him, and the realization that there were tears in her eyes made him freeze where he was. Before he knew what was happening, he felt the strange sensation of his physical form flickering away, and then he fell backward hard against a wall somewhere he did not recognize. He slumped to the floor, panicking as he realized what she had just done to save him.

"Fuck! Dave? Is that you? Fuck is that BLOOD?" To his surprise, it was Karkat who came running up to him and it was one of the few times the troll was not looking at him with complete disdain. Instead, it was fear, and Dave realized that he would have preferred the former. "What the fuck? How did you get here? What? What happened?" He pressed his gray hand against Dave's shoulder, trying to put as much pressure on the wound as he could manage.

"Stop crying over me you goddamn nookstain and go fucking help Jade." he growled, his voice weaker than he wanted it to be, but still laced with the anger and the fear that he could not seem to control.

"Are you fucking serious? I'm not letting you bleed to death, Strider. Jade can-"

"Karkat she's in there ALONE and so if you don't go help her NOW I swear to troll Jegus that I will rip those nubby fucking horns out of your head." Karkat stared at him, some of the familiar disdain creeping into his features, but he did not move.

"Karkat, I'll take care of Dave, go tell everyone that Noir is here and go help Jade." Terezi walked over to them both and placed her hand on top of Karkat's now blood-soaked one, preparing to take over for him. Karkat grimaced at her, but pulled his hand away and turned to run out of the room. Terezi was on her knees then, putting both hands over his bloody wound as Dave lost the strength to hold his own hand there any longer. She leaned into it as much as she could, her fingers gripping and slippery with blood. "Your eyes smell sad, Dave. Where are your cool kid glasses? I figured you slept in those bad boys."

"They are with her." He said softly, and then the pain ripped through him like a violent wave.

* * *

**I have to admit, I love me some Karkles/Dave animosity. **

**-CS**


	20. Chapter 20

He fought through the pain, struggling to keep himself alert, blinking back the fog that pressed over his vision. He heard Terezi's voice yelling at him, and he tried to focus on it, but it was becoming so fucking hard to focus on anything anymore. He had wondered fleetingly if Jade was alright, the vision of her face flashing like a bulb with a wattage too high for the outlet, and it sparked and burned out to be replaced with a void of panic and unyielding, unrelenting _pain_. A pain that shot from his shoulder through his body, and he wanted to scream but he did not seem to have the strength. He could barely get enough air in his lungs. The cut must have been _much_ deeper than he imagined, he could still feel the hot blood rolling slowly down his uncovered chest and arm, both of his hands drenched and slippery and tingling down to numbness. He felt tears prick at the edges of his eyes; tears of desperation rather than pain, anger rather than fear. He realized with a numb ache that he was not going to be awake much longer.

His eyes drooped shut at the thought, weirdly calm and transient as he let the pain wash over him, no longer fighting to keep it down. Then he felt a sharp sting on the side of his face that jolted him halfway back to his senses.

"No, fuck no cool kid you're not dying here. Keep your eyes open."

"Terezi…" he choked out, forcing himself to focus his eyes on her, though he could feel his heartbeat fluttering weakly and he knew he had lost way, way too much blood. He was tired, and he wanted to rest, but she was fighting to keep him there and so he fought, too. Albeit, weakly.

"No, don't fuck with me. Don't give me any fucking excuses. Your eyes are a way t-tastier flavor than this dull blood, so don't f-fucking shut them again." She was crying, he could hear it in her voice though he could not focus his eyes to see anything clearly. What the fuck was it with all the women in his life and all these tears? Over _him _of all people. Dave Strider, clever, cool, ironic, and most importantly pretty damn _cold_. He had never even told Jade how much she really meant to him. He had stupidly thought he hadn't needed to, but without all the bullshit fogging up his mind, as he slowly lost his grip on it, he was coming to a lot of realizations. One of which he was trying to communicate to Terezi.

"Pointless..."

His eyelids felt so heavy, and he gave in after his last short bout of pointless fighting had completely drained his energy. This time he barely responded to the pain of her hand hard on his face and her words were like static on a dead channel. He was nothing but pain and exhaustion, and he just wanted it to end.

* * *

Terezi's senses were overwhelmed by the smell of blood in the air, and it was making it hard for her to see anything else. There were smeared, bloody handprints layered against his pale cheek where she had hit him to try and wake him up, but he had stopped responding after the first few. She had ripped her shirt off, biting into it with sharp teeth and tearing it into a long strip of fabric that she used to tie off his shoulder, sensing the white of his exposed bone as she removed her hand from the sticky, red filth. _Not good_. The blood flow was slowing, but simultaneously his breaths were becoming much shallower, his bare white chest heaving weakly as he struggled for air. He had been sitting propped against the wall, but after she bound his shoulder she moved him down to lay on the floor with his head in her lap.

She sat like that for a few moments; spending silent tears on her friend that she was not sure how to help. She knew that he had tried to tell her it was pointless, and she hoped it meant what she thought it had, that he would just come back if it killed him, but she did not want to be forced take that chance. She heard him whine so quietly beneath his breath, and then he whispered something. The sound was sad and short and if it hadn't been for her exceptional senses it would have been too low for her to discern. "_Jade._" He was fucking saying her name.

"She's fine, Dave." She told him, though she had no actual way of knowing. Karkat still had not returned and their corner of the meteor was as silent as the grave. She had no way of knowing if any of them were alright, but he could not afford to stress even a little on the thought that she might not be perfectly safe. "Jack won't hurt her. The part of Bec in him won't let him." He sighed a little at that, and she could hear how little air was making its way into his lungs. In a split second decision based purely on her concern and fear for her best friend's life, she took his head from her lap and leaned over him. "Stay with us Dave. She needs you."

"_No_," she heard him whisper, and her heart clenched in her chest and she felt hot tears running down her cheeks. Who was this sad boy that lay in front of her? This was not the cool, funny, ridiculously confident Dave Strider that she knew. She leaned down on him and placed her lips on his, and he only twitched slightly before calming again, making no attempts to push her off. She blew air into his lungs then, breathing for him, and as she did so she placed her hand delicately above where his human heart beat weakly in his chest. This close she could smell a twinge of salt in the corners of his eyes. She could also sense the pale pallor of his flesh, completely devoid of color.

She breathed for him long after he had stopped breathing of his own accord, his heartbeat a memory against her fingertips.

* * *

Jade was livid. She was unrelentingly, unbelievably angry and she was fighting Noir with every inch of that rage, her powers pushing out of her in waves as she watched the white Noir, who had introduced herself quickly as Peregrine Mendicant (one of the weird carapace titles she was accustomed to because of her time on Prospit), hit him hard with the blade wrought from her own chest, chipping away at his massive pool of health. Jade noticed, much to her frustration, that Noir had mostly healed from their last fight. He would keep coming back, and more of the people she loved would get hurt, or killed, and she was fucking tired of it. She was not going to let him go this time. She would protect them. She would protect _him_.

She could not help but imagine Dave, all the blood gone from his face and pouring out between his clenched fingers, just as stubborn as he always was. Trying to be strong. Trying to act like he was invincible. Stupid, wonderful boy. And her rage flashed in her again, new and fresh, and she widened her hands, attempting to rip the Bec pretender in half. He was too strong, but he twitched in her grip and PM landed another hard shock against his side, barely softened by his own sword moving to block it. They fought in the cramped space, PM dealing all the hits while Jade supported her from the side, too preoccupied to go for her own weapon. She was of more use on the sidelines anyway, PM hitting for significantly more damage than she did. She could see the frustration in Noir's face, snarling at her confusedly through bared teeth, and she fought the urge to see him as her once beloved friend. He was a monster. He was wrong.

"Harley, are you okay?" Karkat had burst into the room, sickle in hand and his chest heaving as he struggled to catch his breath. She almost lost her grip at her surprise, but she quickly refocused herself, her eyes set on the fight between PM and Noir.

"I'm fine! Just get out of here!" she snapped at him, but he did not move to do as she asked.

"No. I promised that asshole in the dark glasses that I would make sure nothing happened to you." He ran forward and threw a graceful slice against the side of Noir's dark snout and he spit in rage, Karkat leaping back to dodge the stab aimed back in his direction.

"And what about him? Did you just listen to him? Just leave him there to bleed out? I sent him there for a reason!" She sent a pulse of power from her and knocked Noir against the far wall, and her untouched cup of coffee from before was knocked from the desk and the brown, strong smelling concoction pooled on the floor. She stared at it like it was more than what it was, and her mind was filled with a longing she could not act on. "You really hate him that much?" She spat. There were tears in her eyes, and she wanted to follow Dave, make sure he was okay, but she could not let Noir go.

"FUCK no! I don't hate him, anyway." He danced back as another of Noir's slices hit the open air inches from his lean torso. "I'd go so fuckin' far as to call him one of my best friends, despite how much seeing his cocky fucking face pisses me right the fuck off." He moved fluidly behind Noir and hooked him in the side with his weapon, and Noir let out a howling scream as his blood splattered on the floor. PM flew at Noir in his moment of distraction and he barely dodged her sword aimed straight for his face. "Terezi's got him. All he could do was give me shit for not running immediately to YOUR aid. Try and have a little more gogdamn faith in me. You two are fucking NUTS over each other, I swear." He whipped around and caught the edge of Noir's sword with the curve of his own blade and threw him off balance just enough for PM to knock him full on the floor, her sword cutting barely at the hard black shell that was his neck, red blood dripping over the floor. "If it weren't proving to be such a pain in the spinal crevice I would DAIN TO SAY that it was downright fucking ADORABLE."

Jade watched him fight, then, letting his words soak over her without finding it in herself to respond. She could not help but admire his fluid movements. He was probably a better fighter than most of them in this game, and he had not even reached God Tier. She was struggling against Noir now, and he had started flickering around the room as he struggled against her grip. His movements were easily predictable, though, and he could not pull away from her long enough to teleport more than a few inches. PM matched his speed with her own, bearing down on him with impressive ferocity. It wasn't until Karkat took a pretty significant hit to the side of his face that she lost her focus, and Noir teleported from the room in a burst of green energy and a deafening crack. PM looked back at Jade and Karkat for a moment before following him, and for a moment Karkat thought Jade would go next, but she did not. Instead she dropped to the floor to make sure he was alright, and once she recognized the cut as relatively unimpressive and not having the potential to kill him, she grabbed him by the wrist and together they disappeared from the room.

She had momentarily considered following Noir and PM, but she had to see Dave; had to know that he was okay. She and Karkat appeared next to each other in the dark corner of the meteor where she had sent Dave, and looked around, her white dog ears twitching to hear a sound. She did not have to listen long, because she immediately heard a girl's choked breaths coming from the far wall. She felt sick. She was terrified, and she did not think she could handle the implication of those sounds. Karkat had lost his balance and was picking himself up off the floor, grunting angrily before he, too, registered where they were and the sounds that were echoing in the room.

"Terezi!" he shouted, and he ran forward to the dark mass of red and gray before them. Jade couldn't breathe. She should not have fucking left him. That was the exact wrong fucking thing to do. She could not make her muscles move, and she felt her heart thumping hard and loud in her throat and her ears. _There is so much blood._

"J-Jade! Wait, Jade. H-he'll be okay. He'll be fine, H-he said he would be fine so he will be so just s-stay calm, okay?" he voice was trembling, and she heard Karkat curse under his breath when he approached them, falling to his knees and putting his arms around what she assumed was Terezi's form. Both of them hunched over a form she _knew _was Dave's. A million things ran through her head then, and she choked on breath as she struggled to steady herself. Something shattered in her, and she could not stand there anymore. She was going to rip Jack to _fucking pieces_. She was not going to let him hurt anyone she loved anymore. She was the one who had to do it. She was the only one who stood a chance running after him.

With a crack and a flash of light, she was gone.


	21. Chapter 21

Jade followed Jack through the maze of the lab, images of Dave's limp, and unmoving body on the cold floor of the meteor flashing through her head. She could not breath, because if she did she would cry. She would scream. She would be broken, and she could not let it happen, so she bit her lip until blood dripped down her chin and neck. That was what this game was doing to them all. She had never wanted to be a fighter. She had played at guns and marksmanship, but when it came down to it she just wanted to be warm and happy with Bec and her friends. All of those dreams were poisoned with the image of blood;

blood and blood and his beautiful broken body.

She had to stop it.

* * *

Dave did not come back effortlessly the way that Jade had. He woke up gasping and panicking, a dull pain still shooting through his pale body as he lurched himself forward. Almost immediately, two long, thin arms reached out to steady him and for a fleeting moment, he thought it was Jade. Once he focused he could see the skin was gray, and the face looking worriedly back into his was Terezi's. He quickly lowered his face and his blonde hair fell in front of it protectively as he registered the absence of his trademark shades. He fought with himself to calm, almost immediately regaining his impassive appearance, but it was undermined by the expression in his wide red eyes which he had never been able to control with much success.

"The hell happened?" he asked, eyes focused intently on the dried blood on the floor beneath him. Everything after Jade had teleported him was muddled.

"You uh, checked out there for a bit, cool kid." She said with a weirdly controlled expression.

"I 'checked out'? Jegus, Terezi. You mean I passed out?" he scooted back a few feet so he could lean against the cold gray wall behind him.

"I think, probably, a little more serious than that." She was not wearing her own shirt. He realized it as she took a seat next to him. His shoulder was wrapped in black torn shreds of cloth that he assumed used to be the conspicuously absent shirt. It was stiff with dried blood, as was most of the left side of his body. He was, he realized, barely wearing anything at all. He found that he did not care much. His head was still trying to catch up with everything that was going on.

"So I..." and then it hit him, and he almost laughed at how stupid it seemed. "Seriously."

"Well you're better now!" and she grinned that crazy grin, all teeth haloed by her black lips, and it made the weird anxiety in his stomach recede a bit at the familiarity. "Took you a long enough time to wake up. I was starting to worry you might not." Her grin faltered for a split second as she finished.

"Where is… anyone else? I would think there would be a whole mess of teary-eyed faces surrounding me, waiting for the blessed resurrection." He joked mildly, his mouth a taut, straight line.

"Well, Jack…"

"Fuck." He pressed his hand against the wall to support himself and stood up quickly, his expression slightly frantic for a moment as he moved away from the gaping troll girl. "Fuck. How the fuck." _How the fuck did I forget?_ "You're not fighting?"

"I was watching you, Dave." She answered, standing up and walking to him.

He paused, and he stared at Terezi, trying to read her expression. "I have to go." He turned to leave the room, finally recognizing his surroundings as his mind sped up, everything coming back to him in disorienting bursts. There was a nervous twisting in his stomach as he thought of his friends; as he thought of Jade. He told himself not to worry; told himself that Noir would never hurt her. That didn't keep her safe before, though.

"No." Terezi said, and he paused for a second at her voice, but not for long. He continued then, feeling his stiff limbs stretching as he began to sprint out of the room, trying his best to picture the path back out of the lab from where he was. He was surprised when he heard her following him, her shoes pattering along the hard floor.

He was downright startled when she tackled him.

She shoved her bony elbow against the back of his neck, and he could have thrown her off but as his shoulder made contact with the floor he nearly cried as a searing pain shot through his body. He cursed under his breath, once he found it again.

"Dave. You do realize that you were just DEAD? Are you really that eager to make it permanent?" she was snarling at him, and he could not see her but he could picture those sharp teeth punctuating her fury. He was nearly shaking with anger, himself. He wanted her to let him the fuck go. He breathed calmingly through his clenched teeth as he waited for the pain to recede, and he did not answer her. He just could not make himself care about his own safety. Admittedly, he was not really trying very hard. "Is it as hard as it seems to convince you that we care about you? That our lives would be notably worse if you were to go and get yourself heroically offed?"

"I fucking know…"

"NO. You don't, Dave. This isn't just with Jade. It's like you're always all too willing to put yourself in front of the proverbial bullet." She took some pressure off of him, and he turned halfway to face her as she continued to straddle him. "You want to die, cool kid? I'm sure Jade would be pretty crushed to learn that she was used as the excuse for your noble fucking suicide." He did not want to hear it. He wanted her to stop. Then he saw the teal tears clinging to the edges of her red eyes, and just like that he did not want to fight anymore. She was shaking as he pushed himself into a sitting position and wrapped his long arms around her, his face buried in her hair.

"Sorry, TZ. I don't, I'm just a reckless idiot. Alright? I'm sorry." He squeezed her tighter as he felt her hands brush the bare skin of his back.

"You fucking scared me, cool kid." She said softly. "Even scared my fuckass of a Matesprit."

He tensed up at that. "He was with Jade, I remember him leaving. I specifically remember making him leave while I was still good and breathing." He pulled away from her and looked her in the face.

"He came back… Jade too, but just for a-"

"Wait. She was here." His heart was thumping hard in his throat. "While I was ostensibly dead."

"Yeah. Okay we might benefit from finding her, actually."

"You gogdamn genius."

* * *

"Jade! Jade just WAIT a fucking second!" Karkat had run after her almost immediately after she had disappeared, and now that he finally found her he was not about to let her give him the slip again.

She stopped running a moment and turned to face him, her cheeks flushed and her green eyes wide and rimmed with red. "What! What could you possibly need to say to me right now?" She was shouting, but he did not let it phase him.

"Strider will be…"

"I know! Okay? Thanks, but I know. The fact is that so far we've been lucky, and calling him lying on the damn floor in a pool of blood DEAD is a FAR CRY from what most sane people would consider LUCKY. So I'm ending this."

He walked slowly toward her with his hands up in a surrender-type gesture. "That's good, that's fine. Go, Harley! And all that. But you need to calm the fuck down if you want to be able to kill that thing."

"I'm calm!"

"Really? Looks like you're fucking bawling your eyes out to me!" She stared at him for a moment before reaching up to her face and began rubbing the tears away from her eyes. The anger and sorrow in her expression was only becoming more pronounced as she threatened to rub her skin raw.

"Auuugh. Karkat! We don't have time!" she shouted in desperation.

"We have time for THIS." He said in a tone of finality. "Now. Just. Breathe." She stared at him, and took a deep shuddering breath. He moved slowly toward her, and she did not back away. He touched her on her shoulders tentatively, and when she did not protest he gently wrapped his arms around her, his hand stroking her hair absently as she cried into his black shirt.

* * *

Dave's muscles burned as he ran down the dark corridors of the lab, he and Terezi listening for any sounds that would let them know where anyone was. He had not captchalogued any extra clothes. The last three years had made him lax about what he kept on him, so Terezi had given him some of Karkat's black pants to throw on over his bare legs.

"Dave! I smell blood!" Terezi shouted, and his stomach clenched but he kept his cool as he ran toward the sound of her voice.

"Color?" he yelled back at her, thinking it might be one of the other trolls.

"Candy apple red." She said as he rounded a corner to find her hunched over a long streak of bloodstain on the ground, pressing some of it between two long gray fingers.

"You gunna fucking eat that?" he asked.

"What, you want it?" she asked, a glint of white teeth in the dim light.

"Don't fuck with me." He said, and his heart was beating way too fast. He tried to push it down. "Any idea…"

"It's Karkat. But he was wounded when I last saw him. Though if it's from that… looks like he was dragged across the floor. By his face." She frowned a bit at the last word.

"That's just the best news." He turned to run again, but Terezi's voice stopped him.

"I can smell their trail, Dave. They went this way." Without hesitation he turned around and saw her running again in the opposite direction. He silently followed.

It took him a moment to realize that they were heading closer and closer to the exit, and he was glad because fighting in cramped spaces was significantly more challenging than out in the open, where at least he could dodge without having to be wary of the walls. As they entered into the open air out on the surface of the meteor, the first thing he saw was Kanaya cutting through a huge slew of ogres with her buzzing chainsaw, a slightly insane look on her glowing white face. (He wondered idly where the fuck all of the minions and ogres were coming from, but then he decided that it was probably just shenanigans.) Rose was above her, but he could not tell what she was focused on. His sword was already in his hands as he ran forward, and began taking out as many low level enemies as he could reach while searching the sky for a sign of Noir.

He did not have to search long as he registered the green lightening show above the hull of the broken golden ship. He ran toward it, keeping his eyes to the sky and his sword ready for any adversaries he encountered. As he got closer, he saw Noir, PM, and Jade all above the ship, and they were moving about wildly. To his surprise, Jade had her rifle out, and instead of merely manipulating Noir as she had gotten into the habit of doing, she was attacking him relentlessly. She would reach out to hold him when he tried to teleport, but then she would, herself, flicker in and out, getting close enough to graze his carapace with the muzzle of her gun and shoot spatters of his red blood into the open air.

John was on the ground below them, and next to him was Karkat, a stream of red blood against the side of his face but still seeming relatively unharmed as he danced gracefully with his sickle in hand. He ran to them, and when Karkat looked up at him there was a very obvious look of relief on his face.

"About fuckin' time, Strider."

He was about to respond when PM came crashing down from the sky.

* * *

Jade watched helplessly as Noir used his power to pitch PM hard against the ground. Until that point he had never laid a hand on either of them, merely focusing on the defensive, but they were chipping hard away at his health and his anger had flashed in an alarming blaze. As her eyes followed PM down, she saw Dave there, his eyes uncovered but directed away from her. She felt a knot in her throat as she stared at him, and then a little too late realized that Noir was using the chance to flee the battlefield again.

She only had a few seconds to make her decision. All she knew was that at that moment everyone she loved was still breathing, and she was going to keep it that way. For a moment before she turned to follow Noir into the void, Dave lifted his eyes to her, and the relief in his expression turned to pain as his eyes glanced in the direction Noir had fled. _I'm sorry_. She turned, tears in her eyes, and flickered, disappearing in a flash of green light.

Dave couldn't breathe.

He could not breathe for a very, very long time.


	22. Chapter 22

Dave gripped at the hilt of his sword. He was holding on so tightly that he could feel his pulse beating against it, a thrum that was echoed loudly in his ears. He was staring into the space where Jade had been not moments before, his blonde hair falling messily across wide, red eyes. She was gone. Not somewhere else on the meteor, not to a place where he could follow. She was gone into the dark void after an adversary that had managed to elude a creature with assumedly the same powers as himself, someone whom he had just thrown like a rag doll from the sky. He could not ignore the sinking sensation in his heaving chest, the knot in his throat; everything a manifestation of his fear and his helplessness. He was angry at her, and at the same time felt a painful affection toward her for being so stupidly brave. Most of all he could not help hating himself thinking he was part of the reason she had gone.

Outwardly he stayed still as stone, but the fight in him became all the more consuming as he stared into the black.

John had followed Dave once the blonde had appeared from the lab, having been taking out a small horde of lesser enemies before his appearance, and was walking up behind him quietly. Dave did not move, and his gaze was set toward the empty space that expanded above them. It was hard for John not to stare as he walked around to the front of Dave and caught a glimpse of his piercingly red eyes, for the first time since John had known him uncovered by the dark shades he had given him. What startled him more was the intensely pained expression in those eyes as Dave continued to stare forward, seemingly unaware of his presence. He registered the blood all over his pale body and the haphazard ripped dressings that were spun across his left shoulder where most of it had dried and cracked.

"Dave! What happened?" he asked, and Dave jerked his head to the side, meeting his eyes for a split-second before bowing his head and letting his hair fall over his face. His eyes were not completely obscured, but John would still have difficulty getting a good glimpse of them.

"She's gone." He said simple, a forced calm to cover up a tiny flutter of anxiety that was obvious in his words.

"What are you talking about? Who's gone? Also, what about all that blood, Dave? Are you okay?" John spoke faster and faster as he questioned his friend, but Dave stayed as still and calm as ever, his mouth twitching slightly before opening to speak again.

"Jade. Followed Jack." Dave lifted his left arm to point in the direction that she had left in, a brownish-red mess of dried blood making its way in streaks down to his fingertips. John was completely transfixed by the gesture, both because of the blood and also because he could not seem to make himself understand what Dave was talking about.

"She… Dave she left? What?" He was starting to understand as Dave raised his head to meet his eyes again, the strain obvious in his features.

"Hey! Dave! What happened? You ran off!" Terezi waved her cane in the air as she sprinted toward her friend, a toothy grin plastered on her face. Dave and John turned to face her and noticed Karkat a ways from them hunched over the body of PM who seemed to still be out cold, blood spattered across the ground around them and his sickle hanging limply in his hand. He had been vaguely aware of Dave and John a few yards away until he heard Terezi's voice and turned to watch her lope toward the group. Karkat's face was set in a concerned frown; face a red mess of blood.

The look on Dave's face as Terezi ran toward him was complicated. John's heart was beating hard and he could feel himself shaking slightly as his panic peaked. "We need to go after her!" he said earnestly, a note of pleading in his voice as he stared at the back of Dave's still turned head.

"Dude…" Dave started, emptiness laced within his overly calm words. He kept his face away from John's, and it was starting to make him slightly angry. He thought he cared about her, but he was being so fucking cold.

"What are you guys talking about?" Terezi asked, her grin faltering slightly.

"Dude,_ what_? We've already wasted enough time. We need to go!" he backed up and began to hover over the ground, glancing back into the void where Dave had pointed earlier.

"We'll never catch her." Dave said simply, still refusing to let anyone look him in the face. He had recaptchalogued his sword and had both of his hands shoved in the pockets of his borrowed jeans.

"Well we could TRY." John raised his voice as the anger flared in him. Dave stayed still and quiet, but his shoulders seemed to tense at the words. "I thought you cared about her, man?" he spat it out. Dave turned slowly, and he raised his eyes to his best friend. John's heart nearly broke. "Dave..." He pleaded. What John had thought was a calm expression suddenly became one of intense pain. Dave's lips were trembling as he tried to press them together into a straight line, and his eyes were glazed over and bloodshot. He opened his mouth slightly, but when he did the shaking got worse. Instead he just inhaled deeply and shut his eyes tight, turning his face away from his friend. He took a few deep breaths before he tried to speak again. John just stared at him.

"I… fucking care." He said in a defeated tone, barely able to speak as his voice caught in his throat. He turned, then, and walked away toward the entrance to the lab. Terezi moved as if to follow, but seemed to reconsider and instead walked toward Karkat, who was helping a slightly disoriented PM up from the ground. John just stared, drifting back to the ground as he watched his best friend walk away from him.

The shaking was getting worse and Dave ended up sprinting almost the whole way back to his room. John's words kept running through his head and he couldn't get them out again. Of course he fucking cared. It was killing him how much he cared but there was nothing any of them could do about it. They could be _anywhere_. He swung the door to his room open and rushed in, slamming it behind him and pressing himself against it as he quickly lost control of his breathing. He wanted his fucking glasses. He looked around the room and spotted them next to the decimated remains of desk, his laptop lay on its side blinking a small light into the dark room. He almost tumbled to the ground and his hand shook as he groped for the shades. Once he had his hands on them he pulled them up to his face, and he was trembling so hard he had to try a few times to get them securely over his eyes. He stared into the black, his legs sprawled out in front of him as he backed up against the bed. His shades blocked out whatever trace of light had been in the room.

He took deep gulping breaths to try and steady himself, but as he exhaled again, strained sobs would escape his lips. He clenched his fists so hard that he bled where his nails dug into the palms of his hands. He wanted to go after her more that he could express. He wanted to find her and bring her back, but he couldn't. It was impossible. She would have to find them again. He put his hands behind his neck and dug his fingernails into the skin there, close to ripping it off in an attempt to distract himself. His hands moved frantically against his neck and he whimpered low under his breath. "The _fuck_." He pleaded with no one. She was alone out there… alone. And there was nothing he could do about it.

After a while he was able to calm himself down a bit, and he pushed himself up off of the floor, and walked around the bed. He went into the bathroom and turned the knob to the sink, waiting a moment for it to get hot before splashing his face with it, and the water ran red through his fingers. He looked down into it and something about watching the red circle down the drain broke something inside him, and without even realizing it he raised his fist and put it right through the mirror in front of him. The pain that searched from his fist up the length of his arm brought him back to his senses, and he very calmly picked the pieces of glass out of his skin, dropping them one by one into the bloody sink. Almost without any emotional reaction at all, he contemplated how fucking crazy that was, but it had served its purpose. His calm was for all intents and purposes back in action. He took a deep breath and flexed his bleeding hand, barely wincing at the pain.

He walked over to the shower door and opened it, smearing fresh blood against the clear glass and dripping it onto the tiled floor. He turned the shower on full blast and walked in without taking off his pants or his shades, letting the hot water sear his flesh and turning his mind foggy as he lost himself in the sensation. He leaned against the back wall of the shower, and it was all he could do to keep himself standing. He lifted his maimed hand up to the showerhead and winced as the pressure washed out the wounds, and he reached up to pick out one last tiny shard of reflective glass out of his knuckle. "Fuck." He said again, inspecting the damage he had done. "I'm fucking insane."

He finally peeled off the rest of the clothes and the wrappings around his now healed shoulder, but left the shades. They helped him keep himself leveled. He stayed in the shower until the water ran clear again, and then stepped out and pulled a clean pair of boxers on. His hand was not bleeding anymore, but he looked around for dressings anyway. He was sure Jade had never taken them out of the room. After wrapping his hand untidily, he ambled back into his bedroom and looked around, the light from the bathroom streaming in. It was a mess. There was a dried puddle of blood on the floor and wall where he had been stabbed, and a lot of his things were broken. Everything that mattered seemed to have survived, though. He realized that one of Jade's flower pots had fallen and broken on the floor, and he, almost robotically, kneeled down to start picking up the pieces. After he was done, he threw away everything but the flowers, instead choosing to captchalogue them.

He wandered over to the pile of clothes he kept in the corner and found his God Tier outfit looking like new at the top of the pile. _Kanaya_. She was always doing stuff like this, but he was grateful for it. He pulled it on, and it felt good to be back in them; even his shitty hood, which he pulled up over his hair and ears. He didn't care what anyone said, his hood was boss. Next, he wandered over to his turntables and inspected them. Everything seemed relatively the way they should be, and so he pulled the headphones on. He flipped the system on and put the needle on the record, and the music flooded into his ears. He got lost in the beat, aching to forget, his fingers working the equipment expertly.

His heart nearly jumped out of his throat when he felt a hand on his shoulder, and for a moment he hoped stupidly that it would be Jade. He turned and his face met John's, who looked to have been crying. Dave pulled off the headphones and flipped off the system before turning back to his friend. "Sup." He said, speaking quieter than he usually would.

"I'm sorry." He said simply, and tears welled up in his eyes. "You were right, I was just-"

"Dude, chill. It's fine. We're totally cool."

"Seriously? You're awesome, Dave." John smiled a bit as he reached up to rub his eyes under his big square glasses.

"You know it." Dave finished. He tried as hard as he could to sound normal, but there was exhaustion in his voice that he could not get rid of.

"She'll be okay! Jack wont hurt her. She'll be back." He was forcing his optimism, and it was obvious.

"Yeah." Dave answered, wishing he felt even a little comforted by it. John left shortly after, and as soon as the door shut behind him Dave let out a trembling breath. He turned around to survey his room again, and all he could see was Jade. Her plants, her squiddles, her clothes. It even smelled like her.

_I can't stay here._ His hands shook and he clenched them into tight fists. Without another thought he turned around and left, shutting the door quietly behind him.

* * *

**Sorry for the wait between updates. Finally graduated from college! Man what a hectic week. Should be able to update more now, though. Thanks so much for all the comments and views, I love hearing feedback. Hope you all are still enjoying the story, and thanks so much for the support. Now, I go cuddle my boyfriend who I missed terribly while I was busy with all this school crap. **

**Also, this song really is having a huge impact on the tone for the next couple(?) chapters, I chose a cover version because I imagine it's actually Dave and Jade singing. The male vocalist is just PERFECT. Augh. Anyway, it's the song _Set Fire To The Third Bar_ by Snow Patrol **

**youtube .com/watch?v=QD-3gepor68 (this site is weird about links sorry)  
**

**-CS**


	23. Chapter 23

Jade always knew where Noir was, as long as he did not get too far away from her. She never let him. She followed him through the cold and the void and the black. When she caught up to him she used her powers to keep him there, slowly chipping away at his health with her rifle. He would dodge most of the attacks; she was not strong enough to hold him still for longer than a few seconds. He was getting slower, though, and more tired, but so was she. She was exhausted, but she followed him relentlessly. She was not letting him get away again. She could not let him.

* * *

Dave walked his way quietly through the dark halls of the lab. He was not sure where he was headed, but anywhere would be better than his room. He found himself wandering out of the building and into the open air on the face of the meteor. He looked around for a moment, and his eyes settled on the large form of the golden ship Jade and John had arrived on. He started toward it, and as he approached he began to discern an orange figure positioned on the edge of the ship, long wispy sprite tail curling and uncurling against the yellow metal. It was weird, he knew Davesprite had arrived with John and Jade, but he had not seen him at all until that moment. He looked up at the sprite's face as he moved closer, and his shaded eyes were pointed toward the black void.

Dave pushed up off the ground and rose up in front of his orange doppelganger, and he saw his head lower, both of their eyes hidden beneath the same pair of shades. "Yo." Said Dave as he moved closer and his feet touched down on the ship.

"Sup." Davesprite lifted his head in a slight nod as he responded, moving over slightly to allow Dave to sit next to him.

Dave shrugged as he sat. The two of them stayed there in silence for a long time, both of their faces staring straight forward into the void. "Where you been?" Dave finally asked him, and Davesprite turned his head a bit to look at him.

"Around. Here, I guess." He responded. Dave stared at him a bit before he turned his head away again. "You waiting for Harley?" he asked. He was getting right to the point, and Dave's heart dropped a little in his chest.

Dave shrugged again. "I dunno. I guess so. I guess the whole ironic no emotions bullshit is really not working out right now. I would feel embarrassed but you're _me_ so you probably knew all this anyway." He was not sure if it was more important for him to keep up the façade or less so when speaking with Davesprite, but he made the decision to not be terribly coy about it. He was not really in the mood to play around.

"Yeah I guess I did." Davesprite responded easily.

"Seriously though dude, you avoiding us? Harley talked like you two had been pretty close, so what gives?"

"I've just been busy, you know mixing some sick beats. Photographing shit. Being generally awesome."

"Naturally. You still do photography? Shit I haven't done that in… for-fucking-ever. Probably since before Sburb. I have spent a fuckton of time in Can Town with Terezi getting my sick arts on." He paused for a moment. He took a deep breath when Davesprite did not respond immediately, and made the decision not to drop the subject. "I think she was upset that you weren't around, dude." Davesprite let out a sarcastic laugh that made Dave frown slightly beneath his shades. In that moment he realized something that should have been immediately obvious. The reason he hadn't been around, the reason he was there that night. "Shit, man."

"Yeah." He said, seeming to understand Dave's rather cryptic response.

"So you.."

"Of course I do."

"Huh." He paused a moment, unsure of how to continue. "I'm sorry I guess." He phrased it poorly, but the sincerity was in his voice. It had never actually crossed his mind that Davesprite would have feelings for Jade as well, but now that it was out in the open he could not understand why he had not known all along.

"Nah, man. Don't be. She never… I dunno. I think she probably knew, but I never pushed it because it felt like every time she looked at me she was looking for you instead." Dave was feeling a weird mixture of pleasure and guilt. Mostly the guilt, though.

"That's fucked up." Dave said simply. Davesprite smirked at him.

"Look, man, We might have started out the same dude, but we've had completely different experiences. Our relationship just progressed differently. I'm cool with it. I came back as much to save her as I did to save John. I'm just… you know… glad she's alive. We're still friends. I just didn't figure it would be right to intrude anymore. John comes to chill with me a lot. Makes me watch these terrible fucking movies. You know."

"I do." He said with a small smirk on his own face. They were both quiet again, and Dave found that his eyes were directed back to the void. His mind was on Jade, and he felt a knot forming in his throat. He pressed his lips together to keep a straight face, but he felt Davesprite's gaze on him all the same.

"So you really care about her."

"Yeah." he took a deep breath, his gaze never faltering.

* * *

Jade had Noir cornered. They had both landed on a passing meteor, and Jade had an iron grip on him as he backed up against a large boulder. He was spitting mad, but he still could not bring himself to actually raise his sword against her. He had, in a fit of fury a few moments before, thrown her back against the ground. He had then subsequently freaked out and approached her to try and make sure she was okay. When he kneeled over her she had made a very close shot to the side of his neck and blood spewed everywhere as he attempted to flee away from her again. She shot up from the ground, enveloped in a bright green glow and reached out to hold him again; pushing him into the corner he was now struggling to escape from. Jade had out the Green Sun Streetsweeper and she fired at him relentlessly, his body bursting into sparks of green light that bounced off of every surface.

It was taking everything she had to injure him, and the wound in his neck had already stopped bleeding. He was regenerating faster than she had expected, and without the help of anyone she was starting to doubt whether she could actually kill him on her own. She pushed harder and his back knocked against the hard stone. Every so often Bec would show through on that face, and her heart would drop as he looked at her with wide, sad eyes. As Noir would regain control over his own powers he would become a sparking portal that allowed the bullets to travel through him, and it reminded her of when she used to play fetch with Bec back before the game had started. She was exhausted and scared, and keeping her hold over Noir was wavering until thoughts of her guardian flared in her as anger.

Jade effortlessly recaptchlogued her rifle and took both of her hands to control him. She threw him hard against the boulder, and it cracked as Jack yowled out in frustration and pain. She thought of her friends, she thought of all the pain he had put them through and she threw him again. And again. And when she thought of Dave covered in blood she threw him so hard that he broke through the rock and landed sliding against the hard ground, debris all around him. She nearly fainted as exhaustion washed over her, and Jack stood up shakily. She looked up at him through her round glasses, and he met her gaze. He had the nerve to look betrayed, but he did not make a move to continue the fight. After a few moments Jade heard a loud crack and Noir had disappeared again, so she forced herself to push off, and followed him again into the dark void.

* * *

Dave spent the next day trying to act normal. He spent a lot of time with Terezi and the Mayor in Can Town, which he had been sorely neglecting. As he doodled on the wall, he looked over at WV and noticed he seemed significantly less excitable than usual. Once PM had recovered, which did not take long, she had spent some time with him before leaving again, apparently to continue following Jack. _I know how you feel, dude. _He scooted closer to him and put a hand on his shoulder before going to work helping him stack cans of food on the chalk-covered floor. Terezi and he made jokes, and most of the time he was able to actually feel as normal as he acted, but the longer Jade was gone the more anxious he became.

John was probably as worried as he was, but he was much more open about it. He did not disguise the way he stared into the black when they left the lab to spar or just to get some fresh air. Rose was concerned, but she hid it well and spent most of her time trying to get the two of them to talk about their feelings rather than to confront her own. Weirdly enough, Karkat was the easiest of everyone to be around, because not only did he not try to talk about Jade, he also acted as a pretty good rage soundboard. They continued to berate one another just as they had always done, their mutual animosity acting as a good coping method to push down the worry they were both feeling. Dave would never admit to Karkat how much he needed it, and he was pretty sure it was the same for him.

Dave returned that night to the golden ship to sleep on the deck, or at least try. After chilling with Davesprite a bit, he ended up just staring into space, hoping stupidly that she would come out of it. He kept his iPhone on him and he had started sending out messages every few hours trying to find out if she was okay. It did not seem like she had any of her computers on her, which was just a little improbable. He just hoped that was the reason she never answered.

- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering gardenGnostic [GG] at 23:22 –

TG: hey

TG: you there

TG: just answer when you get this ok

- turntechGodhead [TG] ceased pestering gardenGnostic [GG] at 23:30 –

- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering gardenGnostic [GG] at 01:36 –

TG: hey

TG: wanted to check in again i guess

TG: we were all just hoping you were okay

TG: well I guess I was

TG: hoping

TG: so just message someone back ok

- turntechGodhead [TG] ceased pestering gardenGnostic [GG] at 01:39 –

- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering gardenGnostic [GG] at 02:45 –

TG: dont you have like 5 separate computers

TG: turn one of those on

TG: so we can make sure youre alive

- turntechGodhead [TG] ceased pestering gardenGnostic [GG] at 02:49 –

- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering gardenGnostic [GG] at 04:45 –

TG: jade

TG: answer me

- turntechGodhead [TG] ceased pestering gardenGnostic [GG] at 04:46 –

- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering gardenGnostic [GG] at 05:51 –

TG: please answer me

TG: god damn it

TG: please

- turntechGodhead [TG] ceased pestering gardenGnostic [GG] at 05:57 –

* * *

**It made me sad to write those pesterlogs. Like, probably more sad than it should have.**

**-CS**


	24. Chapter 24

Jade had been gone for 93 hours, 23 minutes, and 4.6 seconds and Dave felt every second of it like a knife in his chest. Ever since he had fully realized his Hero of Time potential, time moved differently for him. It was harder to distract himself from the metronome in his head. It had been quieter with Jade, but with her gone it was worse than ever, thrumming on like a taunt. It was driving him mad, but he did his best to ignore it. No one suspected much, no one knew how badly he was losing himself to it.

Dave stared at his iPhone in his pale hands. He had stopped sending messages after the second night. He stopped once they got desperate. If she was going to answer, she would have done so already. His eyes were set on her idle handle, hoping it would turn green. It never did. He was exhausted, but he could not seem to stay asleep for longer than an hour. He would wake up in a panic, groping around for his phone to check and see if there were any messages. He struggled to rest, but he needed to check; needed to make sure. He knew he should throw it away, that she wasn't going to answer and he was just driving himself crazy, but he could not make himself do it.

The circles around his eyes were getting darker, and he was talking to the others less and less. He tried, but most of the time he was somewhat less than alert to what was going on around him. He walked around in a haze; the only thing clear was the _tick tock_ of the clock in his head and the weight of his phone in his hand. He tried to drown it out with his music or by surrounding himself with his friends but it barely worked. He was not even able to fight back with Karkat anymore, merely shrugging off his half-assed insults, not even expending enough energy to even attempt a comeback. If he had been paying more attention, he would have noticed the concern on Karkat's face every time his attempts to antagonize him fell flat. He never did.

"Dave. Hey Dave, you okay bro?" 110 hours, 12 minutes, and 53.1 seconds since Jade left, and John was trying to break through the fog in his mind. Dave shook his head and turned to look John in the face. The dark-haired boy had a deeply concerned expression as he leaned in to put a hand on his best friend's shoulder.

"Sup." He said, his expression empty as he met John's blue eyes with his own beneath his dark shades.

"What's going on with you? I've been trying to get your attention for a couple minutes now." John moved closer as if he were trying to see Dave's eyes beneath his shades, and the blonde turned his head a bit to avoid the gaze.

"Sorry, man. Guess I was somewhere else." Dave replied quietly. John furrowed his brow at him.

"We all miss her. We're all worried. You don't have to keep it all to yourself you know?" John gave his shoulder a soft squeeze and Dave offered him a tired smirk to attempt to ease his worry a bit.

"I'm fine. Don't worry your pretty little head about me, Egderp." Dave reached out and ruffled his hair before moving to push himself out of his seat.

"Dave…" John said in a small, sad voice. Dave stopped where he stood, his back to his friend. He pressed his nails into the palms of his hands, which were hidden in his pockets, and took a deep breath to keep his voice steady.

"Seriously. No worries. I'm chill."

"No, you're-" Dave turned his face to John, and it stopped him in his tracks. Dave's hands were trembling a little in his pockets and his mouth was half open as if he were about to say something. "We can drop it. I'm just worried about you, dude." Dave closed his mouth again and gave him a curt nod before turning his face away from him again. Without hesitation he headed toward the exit, pausing for a moment to look one more time back at John.

"Thanks," Dave said simply, and then in a few long strides he was gone.

Dave moved his way through the maze of dark corridors, his hands still balled into tight, shaking fists in his pockets. He felt the threat of tears stinging at his eyes, and he tried everything he could to keep it down, but there was a rage in him that was not going away. He went deep into the center of the lab with the huge glass tubes of preserved dead shit everywhere. Somewhere he knew no one usually stayed. He wrestled with himself for a calm that was horrendously eluding him. He was sick of waiting, sick of not knowing. Sick of being useless and not doing any fucking thing to get her back. He hated himself for not immediately following her, though his rational mind told him it would have been useless. She could teleport, he would not have even known what direction to go in.

_It doesn't matter. _He pulled his hands out of his pockets, white knuckled as he continued to clench his hands in fists. _I should have fucking tried. _He pulled his arm back and then swung it hard against the thick panes of glass between himself and the disgusting monstrosity that floated in the semi-transparent ichor. _Fuck. _He swung again, and the glass cracked and spider webbed beneath his fist. It was only the first layer of the glass, so the damage was mostly aesthetic. He alternated his punches, swinging until he could see the skin of his knuckles starting to get left behind on the glass, small pinpoints of red blood dripping down the surface. He didn't know how to deal with his emotions in any way but this one. He had spent his whole life either suppressing everything or fighting out his rage with his brother, which he thought was the only appropriate time to lose his shit. When the calm fell away, it was all he had to work with.

He was pretty sure there was something wrong with that, but he could not fucking care less as the cracks in the glass continued to branch out beneath his bloody fists. He just hit until he could not lift his arms anymore, at which point he turned around and headed back out again. He stuck his trembling, bleeding hands into his pockets to fish out his phone. When he finally retrieved it he had trouble getting his fingers to do what he wanted, and so it took a lot of effort to open up his pesterchum client.

- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering gardenGnostic [GG] at 19:56 –

TG: im sorry

TG: guess im not much of a knight

TG: shouldve gone after you

TG: whatever i guess it doesnt matter

TG: not now anyway

TG: i just

TG: fuck

TG: im scared

TG: just come back

TG: please come back

- turntechGodhead [TG] ceased pestering gardenGnostic [GG] at 20:09 –

Dave nearly dropped the phone out of his hands he was shaking so hard. There was blood smeared across the screen but he just placed it back into his pocket. As he made his way out of the lab he began to feel the exhaustion creep back into him; the exhaustion of the past four days that was wearing on him as badly as everything else. In fact, it was certainly exacerbating the problem. He knew he really needed to try. He had sufficiently worn himself out, and was more willing to welcome rest than he had been at any other point since Jade had gone, so he headed back to the golden ship where he had been spending all of his nights.

Once he arrived, Davesprite was nowhere to be seen. It it did not surprise him. He was thankful for it, in actuality, wanting very much to try and rest as soon as was possible. As he curled up on the makeshift bed out on the deck of the ship he took out his phone again, resting it beside his face on the pillow so he could easily hear any messages that he may receive while he was out. He closed his eyes, and within minutes he was gone. He did not even dream, there was only the calm of the black.

_Tick_

_Tock_

_Tick_

_Tock_

**_Crack_**

Dave jolted awake at the sound. He knew that sound. His stomach clenched anxiously as he pushed himself up from the pile of blankets and ran to the edge of the ship to get a better look. His heart was already racing, but as he registered the scene in front of him he felt a horrible mixture of relief and terrible fear. It was Jade, but she was not alone. She looked bad. She was slow, and the light around her was glowing dim as she hovered mere inches over the ground. Noir looked like he was terribly conflicted, bearing down on her while at the same time holding himself back from attack. She tried to push him back with her power, but he merely flinched and bared his teeth angrily.

Noir was bleeding from multiple places, but his rage seemed to push him forward. Jade's feet touched the ground, and she raised her rifle at the beast, her left hand stretched out seeming to try and hold Noir in place. She pulled the trigger and he dodged it easily, growling at her again and raising his own arms as he loomed over her. She tried one more time to push him back, and it seemed to drain her of the rest of her energy and she flickered as she fell to the ground. Dave leapt from the ship, then, and headed toward them as fast as he could manage. As he closed in he saw Jade on the ground with her eyes half open and breathing hard, and Noir who was apparently fighting a battle with himself as he raised and lowered his sword to her crumpled form. To Dave's complete surprise he reached for the ring on his finger and tugged it off, dropping it on the ground. There was only Jack now, and he clutched a knife in his hand as he raised his arm over Jade, no longer hindered by Bec's loyalty to her.

Dave dropped like a bullet to the ground. Without a single thought besides that of her safety he flashstepped and reappeared over Jade's body, Jack's knife lodged deep in his stomach.

* * *

**Sorry this is short. Sorry for a lot of things.**

**-CS**


	25. Chapter 25

Dave fingered the hilt of the blade in his stomach with his free hand. He was not breathing yet, merely clutching Caledscratch in his fist trying to to ignore the pain that was riveting through his body. Jack stared at him for a moment with a grimace, surprise showing freely in his cold eyes. He rose his arm again, another knife clasped in his black carapace hand, but Dave raised his sword and blocked the second blow that came down on him. "Y-you fucked up Jack," Dave spat, blood dribbling from his mouth. He grabbed the handle of the blade in his gut and his lips pursed together as he pulled it from him, blood flowing freely from the open wound. Dave could not suppress the scream that came from him as he felt the cold steel slice against his flesh as it slid from him.

"Dave! No!" He heard Jade screaming behind him. He tossed the bloody knife to the ground and clutched his bleeding wound with his left hand, the right one still holding up his sword as he turned the time table with his thumb. Jack looked at the bleeding boy in front of him, baring his sharp teeth in protest as he approached him again with the knife. Dave blocked it clumsily and stumbled, mouth contorting when the pain shot through him again. Pale, bloody fingers clutched at his stomach harder in an attempt to ebb the bleeding. "No, no, no, no, no!" Jade yelled again, her desperation unhidden from her tone, and then a shuffling against the ground that told him she was trying to push herself up.

"You FUCKED UP, Jack," Dave yelled again, voice steadier and more confident than before. The blonde boy let a smirk touch his lips, though his hand trembled, wet and slippery with blood. Jack looked at him with indignation on his face, Dave's self-assurance enough to give him an instant of true pause as he tried to decide whether or not the boy was fucking with him. Before Jack could decide, Dave flashstepped behind him and Jack only barely fended off the blow he dealt toward his unshielded head. Jack bared his teeth and stabbed at him again, Dave dodging it almost effortlessly as his smile widened. "Fucking pathetic. This is motherfuckin' child's play. Not even worth my goddamn time." Dave's mouth was coated red, coppery tasting blood against his tongue and he spat it out on the ground before he moved back away from Jack's frantic stabbing. He was playing with him, and it was working.

Dave moved around him again, and as Jack's anger peaked his movements became more erratic. The Dersite was barely able to fend off Dave's lighting fast advances. If he had not been so badly injured, it would have been no contest at all. Dave was getting dizzy, however, and he was struggling to keep his eyes focused. The pain that had been so sharp before was going numb, but it was replaced instead with a dangerous fatigue. He knew he had to end it soon. He rocked uncertainly on the spot after another failed attempt to injure his opponent, and as he shook his head to try and clear out the fog that gripped at him Jack lunged forward. "DAVE!" it was her voice again, and he raised his arm to block, the blades making contact with a loud clang. He took a deep breath, but it was getting steadily harder for him to keep his head straight.

_No more time. Gotta finish this. Come on. Come ON. _He furrowed his brow and brought his leg up to kick Jack hard in the chest, and the Dersite stumbled backward as Dave flashstepped behind him, his sword raised. Jack dodged it and held his knife out to attack him again. Before Dave respond, Jack was thrown hard against the ground, the green light of Jade's power coming off of him in waves. In the corner of his eye he saw her fall back to the ground. _Jade._ She had given him exactly what he needed. Dave moved fast to where Jack lay and pressed the sharp tip of Caledscratch up to his neck.

"Shouldn't have taken off that fucking ring." Dave brought both of his hands to the hilt of the sword and with all of his strength he pressed the blade down hard against him, one last howling screech from his adversary before his head fell from his shoulders. The rest of Dave's strength rushed from him then, and he gripped the hilt hard as he tried to keep himself from falling. The only thing that kept him from giving into the exhaustion was Jade, and so he took his bloody hand and gripped his stomach again, a cry of pain escaping his lips as he put pressure on it. He let go of his sword and left it there in the ground as he stumbled toward where Jade had fallen.

There were tears in Jade's eyes as he approached her, and she knew by looking at him he was barely able to stand much less walk. When he smiled at her it could have killed her, drops of blood clinging to the edges of his pale lips. She was so tired. She had not rested in so long that she was having trouble thinking straight, but the image of him was coming in all too clearly. She let out a sob as she saw how his hand trembled against his stomach. _Oh no. No This is my fault. This is all my fault._ His smile faltered as tears fell down her cheeks, falling clumsily to his knees to lean over her. "H-harley you hurt?" She stared at him like he was insane.

"I-I'm fine! Dave but you… you are… Oh G-god, Dave…" she could not handle the terrible knot that was forming in her throat, her tears falling more freely by the moment. He simply reached his hand to her face and pressed his thumb gently under her eye to wipe away tears that had not yet fallen. He was trembling so hard, a shiver that seemed to rip from the center of him outward, and it was enough to tear her apart. "You shouldn't have done that! Y-you… you'll… oh my God no…" She cried harder, and he pressed his forehead gently to hers and kissed her on the tip of her nose.

"It's okay. It's fine." He smiled at her, and it just made her feel worse. He did not even seem bothered by the fact that he was dying. Unphased by the ever-growing dark stain of blood that spread out from the wound in his gut.

"It's not!" she cried back at him, moving awkwardly beneath him to pull off her shirt and rip it with some help from her powers. As she tied it around him he let out a terrible noise, his face contorting into an expression of pain as he cried out. He did not tell her to stop, though. His breathing was more strained by the time she was finished, and the shirt was already growing dark with blood.

"Couldn't… let you die. Worth it." He said once he could steady his breathing, though his voice was still more strained than before. He smiled at her again as he touched her hair, seeming to be far more interested in looking at her than worrying about himself.

"No it wasn't! We have to get you help. We have to get y-you…" She tried to push him off of her but he would not move, absently tracing her cheek with his fingers.

"Jade… " A drop of blood fell from his mouth and landed on her cheek, and he immediately started wiping it away with his hand. "F-fuck, sorry…"

"No! N-no I don't want this. Don't apologize! I wanted to k-keep you safe… oh my God… I'm sorry I'm so sorry…" He just smiled at her and stroked her cheek as if he was not hearing a word that she said.

"I missed you J-jade. God, I shouldn't have… shouldn't have let you go." Her stomach clenched.

"Dave…" he gasped in pain again, and it made her stop.

"N-no listen to me. Please. I love you. I always have. I love everything about you, I love how you're always so f-fucking happy and open and I- I can't be l-like, I'll never be, but I love that about you. I love your d-derpy teeth and your crazy fucking hair that gets everywhere and how you always laugh at my stupid fucking jokes." He was shaking hard and Jade raised her hands to his face to wipe the blood away from him trembling lips, her tears falling hot against her cheeks. " I l-love how brave you are. I love how much stronger than m-me you are." His arms seemed to give out on him, and he fell onto her chest, crying out softly in pain. She twisted her fingers into his pale hair and held him to her, pressing her lips to his head. "So I c-couldn't… let you die." She held him so tight to her that she was afraid it would hurt him, but he did not protest.

"I l-love you too. I love you, I love you. You c-can't!" She could not say anything else as she began to sob hard into his hair as his own weak fingers moved sweetly against her side, his chest heaving in shallow breaths.

"It's cool," he said, his body going still in her arms. _No. No. _She shook him hard, but he did not respond.

"DAVE." She shouted and shook him again, a fear like she had never felt before took hold of her. "DAVE WAKE UP." She pushed his body away from hers and he rolled onto his back limply, his hands splayed out to his sides. "No Dave WAKE UP PLEASE!" she put her trembling hand up to his mouth, and she could not feel him breathing. Pressing her hand to his neck she found no pulse either. "Oh God no no no PLEASE NO!" She pressed her mouth to his and she could taste the blood on his lips, awful memories mixing with her present horror. She was losing him. She pressed her hands against his chest and pressed down hard over and over trying desperately to restart his heart. She had no idea what she was doing, no one had ever tried to do this in the game before, but it was the only thing she could think of.

She cried harder, after a long time giving up and just going back to shaking him, hitting him, trying everything she could to wake him up but it was no use at all. She had lost him, and he was not coming back to her this time. She gripped at his shirt and dug her nails in deep, pressing her face to his chest as the tears poured from her. She cried and screamed against him until she had nothing left in her. Unable to separate herself from his body, she took his limp arms the way she always had when she would crawl into bed with him while he was asleep, wrapping them around her small body and pushing herself up against him. It was so wrong, so deeply, upsettingly wrong but she could not do anything else.

That was the way the rest of them found her, curled up next to Dave's cold body.

* * *

**Oh god it just keeps getting worse. Would have written this sooner but I was busy doing some fan art instead. Also I'm a bluh bluh huge b8tch and I just kept you waiting for my own amusement. Not really, but it was kinda nice seeing the responses to the chapter. I was genuinely working on other stuff. (you should totes go see i'm artsyUnderstudy on deviantart and just check out my newest pic, it's the first one i have on my front page) SHAMELESS SELF PROMOTION. Anyway, this isn't over yet! So... don't stop reading! Please! Thanks so much for sticking with me for 25 chapters (jegus has it been that many?) Thanks so much for the wonderful comments. Just... motherfucking.. thank you.**

**-CS**


	26. Chapter 26

"Jade, Jade come on look at me." Jade opened her eyes and they focused on her brother. Her head was pounding and her body felt tired and heavy. John's hands were pressed against her head, his thumbs carefully tracing her hairline.

"W-where...?" she felt a terrible sinking feeling in her stomach as memories flashed through her head. She reached out and felt the ground beside her, and her lithe fingers brushed the edge of Dave's shirt. "N-no no God no" tears stung at her eyes and she was suddenly having a very difficult time catching her breath. She wanted it to all be a bad dream, something she could wake up from.

John was looking at her with a terrible expression. "Calm down. I-it's gunna be okay?" he seemed to ask it involuntarily, like he had meant for it to be a statement instead of a question. Jade whimpered as tears ran down her face and she shook her head slowly. John's brow furrowed and his eyes glazed over as the information seemed to hit him. Without hesitation he pulled her into a tight hug, his hands gripping her shoulders as if she were a lifeline, and she held him back even tighter. "I'm really happy you're safe." He whispered to her, and she felt his warm tears hit the bare skin of her shoulder. It made her feel awful. She had left to protect them, and instead because of her own miserable weakness she essentially forced Dave in front of the knife. She was the one who wanted to play this stupid game to begin with. She was responsible for not knowing the consequences. She thought she had all the answers. She was so wrong.

"I'm sorry John I'm s-so sorry. It's all my fault h-he's... Dave is…" John pulled back from her and took his face in her hands again, his face alarmingly serious.

"No it's not, Jade. Don't do that to yourself."

"He's gone because he saved me! I was the one who ran off! I couldn't protect him…" John opened his mouth to speak, but he did not get the chance.

"You mean to say this is a permanent death?" Rose asked in a worried voice as she walked toward Jade and knelt down, purposefully not looking at her fallen brother. The usual sarcastic air that was constantly laced within her speech was conspicuously absent, and her eyes were full of fear. John turned his head without taking his hands from Jade's face, and the look he gave Rose must have answered all of her questions because her hands flew to her mouth, and she appeared to be suddenly holding back tears. "He was so… horrendously reckless. Idiot." She moved her hands up to her eyes and rubbed them, leaving the skin red and splotchy as she lowered them once again.

"I do not want to be intrusive, but I believe we should move his body. That horrible clown will not respect the dead in the way you would prefer." Kanaya had walked up behind Rose to place a tentative hand on her shoulder, and Rose accepted her gesture by closing her own hand over it.

"Thank you, Kanaya. We will move him," Rose responded.

"I'll take care of Gamzee." Karkat grumbled, Terezi clinging to his arms and crying silently.

John turned his face back to Jade's and attempted a smile, and she returned it the best that she could, but tears still streamed down her face. She felt like she was moving more slowly than everyone else, but John seemed privy to her state of mind and did not rush her. "We should take him inside." He said softly, brushing her cheek again with his thumb. "Do you think you will be okay?" Jade nodded at him and game him another small smile, trying to push down her grief and regain a more optimistic demeanor.

"I can take him." She said quietly, touching John's hand affectionately as he finally moved it away from her face. "I can carry him. You lead the way, okay?" He nodded and helped her to her feet, afterword turning to take Rose into his arms as she cried. Kanaya looked at the two of them with worry, her hand still in Rose's. Jade stepped away from Dave's body and as she took in the scene and at the sight of his crumpled body in a pool of dried blood she felt herself on the verge of retching. Karkat walked behind her and placed a hand on her shoulder and she steadied herself.

"Fuck… You don't have to do this, Harley. We can take him." Karkat told her, but she shook her head and held her breath as she raised her hands. Dave's body was enveloped in a pulsing green light as she lifted him gently off of the ground. She heard Karkat sigh as he walked away from her, back toward Terezi who was running back into the lab. Jade looked to John, and he nodded at her that he was ready to go, pointing toward Kanaya to let her know that she was leading the way. Jade had to try hard not to look at his body or else she would not be able to continue on.

They set Dave in an empty room, covering him delicately with a sheet that Kanaya brought to them from his bedroom. Jade had trouble leaving him there, but she eventually pulled herself away out of necessity and headed back to Dave's bedroom almost without thinking about where her feet were taking her. She was still exhausted, but terribly afraid to sleep. Afraid of more void, afraid of waking up and having a moment of ignorance before reality came crashing back down over her. She pushed her way through the door and was met with the room just as disheveled as it had been from her fight with Jack. Dave had not even attempted to pick anything up besides her broken flowerpot which sat in pieces on a half-broken table. It made her sad, though she was not sure exactly why; it was just the care that had gone into cleaning up the only broken thing in the room that belonged to her.

Jade walked into the bathroom and she was surprised to find the mirror broken, blood in the sink and on the floor and many other places throughout the room. _What happened?_ She walked to the sink and began picking up the pieces of broken mirror, dropping them into her palm. Once she had collected a large amount of shards, she was unsure what to do with them and so she dropped them back into the sink, spreading her hands apart as she did so. A green light enveloped all of the shards and she made a motion with her hands, the pieces levitating between them and shrinking to a minuscule size. She smirked at herself momentarily, and proceeded to clean up the rest of the debris in the same manner.

When she was finished she moved slowly back into the bedroom and looked around. Dave's laptop was on the ground and the light on it was blinking slowly. She moved toward it tentatively and picked it up off of the floor, sitting back on the bed and placing it on her lap. Setting a finger softly on the touchpad, the computer screen lit up to show her Dave's Pesterchum client, red walls of text in an open pesterlog window. She scrolled through them, noticing that they were for her, and as she did so she felt the grief wash over anew. He had tried to contact her, begging her to respond. She had not thought it would be so hard on him. She had not thought of much besides wanting to protect her friends. The guilt she felt was overwhelming, and she wiped the tears from her eyes as she continued reading. His last message was the hardest; all illusions of confidence seeming to fall away. He was just a boy who worried for her, and she was not there to help him.

_fuck im scared just come back please come back_

She choked out a sob as she read the last lines over and over, eventually slamming the computer shut and throwing it across the room. She raised her hands to catch it midair and let it drop more gently to the ground, unwilling to allow herself to be so senselessly destructive. She curled up on his bed, breathing deep to take in the smell of him on every inch of the fabric. She missed him so much it was like physical pain; worse because she knew she would never be able to stop missing him. Guilt and pain and missing and she was losing control. Just a week together again had changed everything, a week to figure out just how much they meant to one another, and without him she did not feel right anymore. She sobbed as visions of him came unbidden to her mind, memories of his arms around her, his lips on hers, and she clutched the blankets to her body as she shook against them. She had been fighting with herself to stay strong, but she was done fighting.

She let it all wash over her.

* * *

Jade heard a knock at the door what felt like hours later, and she knew she should answer but could not make herself open her mouth to do so. The knocking came more frantically, then, and she heard Rose's voice on the other side of the door. "Jade, I am sorry to bother you but we have a very serious problem and I need your help. Please answer me or I will be forced to break my way in." Jade pushed herself up and flicked her wrist to unlock the door.

"What's the matter Rose?" Jade asked as she wiped the remaining tears from her eyes. Rose walked quickly into the room, obvious in her distress.

"I thought we may have had more time to grieve, but the game is cruel as always." a hint of anger and impatience was in her voice. "We are going to make impact. I tried to tell everyone that this would happen soon, but 'everyone' was quite a bit distracted. I thought to give you some time alone before I burdened you with the news as well, but I do not have that option. We are heading toward the new battlefield quite quickly, and without your help I am afraid it may be a very dangerous collision. I know…"

"It's fine, Rose." She gave her friend a small smile. "I can do this."

"I loved him, too." Rose said quietly. Jade rose to her feet and wrapped Rose in a tight hug.

"I know. Let's go save everyone now, okay?" Rose let out a tired laugh and nodded, both her and Jade turning toward the door to head to the roof.

As the two of them entered the roof, they gaped at the vision of Skaia inching closer to them by the second. It was small and flat and square, not like the huge round planet their Skaia had been. Jade understood why they had not known how close they were to it until they were right on top of it. "We have very little time, Jade. Do you understand what you need to do?"

"Slow us down? No problem!" Jade raised her hands and the entire meteor began to glow the green of her powers. She lifted off of the ground to survey their movement. It was travelling terribly fast, and quickly approaching Skaia. She focused as hard as she could and they began to slow down, but not enough. She was exhausted, and it was hard to keep her concentration on the meteor when her grief kept ebbing away at her no matter how hard she tried to push it down. She reminded herself of her friends, the people that were depending on her, and she focused harder, letting her anger fuel her power. Slowly, the meteor lost speed, and she could see the checkered ground of the battlefield rushing toward her. With one final burst her light strengthened and she slowed the meteor enough so that when they made their impact, they did not immediately destroy themselves along with everything around them.

The giant rock crashed against the ground, pieces of white and black debris scattered all around them. Jade reached out for Rose, but the blonde girl was already in the air with a deeply concentrated look in her eyes as they watched the meteor slide for a moment across the hard ground. When it finally stopped moving, the last of the tremors ebbing away, their companions began to exit the lab. Jade and Rose headed back toward them as they surveyed the damage. Jade felt drained as the adrenaline wore off, and by the time she was face to face with John and the others, she was fighting back tears again. She hated herself for being so weak. Dave would have been able to keep his cool.

"The fuck just happened, LaLonde?" Karkat complained, and Jade stopped listening as Rose began to give him and everyone else a verbose retelling of the events that had just taken place. She stared off onto the ruined battlefield, and as the smoke cleared she made out four figures heading toward them. As they came closer, she could see their faces and she knew immediately who they were; the heroes from the new session, their ecto-relatives.

"Hey, look whose here!" she said, and everyone turned their heads in her direction, soon after registering their guests. They were all wearing their God Tier outfits and Jade could not help but be impressed by their obvious progress despite their barren session. The two dark haired kids landed first, a boy and a girl that had to be hers and John's relatives. The other two followed, first the girl Roxy who she recognized immediately from Rose's description of her, and then a boy who looked painfully like Dave, only with pointed anime shades rather than the round aviators Dave would wear. The dark haired boy must have been her penpal Jake, and she sorely wished she could be happier to see him. He walked up to her and gave her a big smile that reminded her so much of the vague memories of her grandfather.

"Well hello there! It sure is great to finally get to meet you! I'm Jake, and you must be Jade! Wow I was really expecting you to be older. Heh guess I was wrong, you're the same age as me! Blimey this is unsettling. But good! Very good. Oh wow I'm sorry I'm babbling." Jade tried to smile at him, but he immediately noticed something was the matter. Before he could say anything more, the blonde boy spoke up, and he even sounded like Dave.

"Where is he?" she knew exactly who he meant, and her heart dropped to her stomach as tears came to her eyes.

"I-I'm sorry" she managed to say before the tears started falling down her cheeks. She wiped them away quickly and Jake looked at her with worry all over his expression.

"What are you sorry for Jade? What's wrong?" Jake asked her as he placed a hand on her shoulder. Jade could not answer, but Rose spoke up instead.

"He died saving someone he cared for very much." She said, and Jade knew she meant for it to make her feel better, but it only made her feel worse. She did not want anyone to die for her, especially not Dave. Jake moved away from Jade, then, and over to the blonde boy to touch his hand. He responded and took Jake's hand as well, his expression impassive and controlled as he remained silent.

"Sorry, Dirk. I know you wanted to meet him." Dirk nodded and turned away as Jake squeezed his hand tighter. The dark haired girl turned toward them then, and her emblem was one Jade did not immediately recognize, but Karkat, Rose, and the other trolls stared at it with a weird expression. The girl looked anxious as she struggled to find words to say.

"Do you have him here still?" she finally asked, glancing sadly at the two boys who now had their backs turned on the group.

"We do." answered Rose.

"I think I… I'm not sure but I might be able to help."

* * *

_**Ugh okay I edited this a lot since I first posted it, because I didn't proofread anything and so when I read it this morning I was suprised at how shitty it was. So... yeah. EDITED.**_

**_AGAAAAAIN - OH my GOB I edited it AGAIN I really need to not post shit that isn't proofread like 50 times. This was the first chapter I didn't painstakingly go over before posting so I mean... ugh. SORRY. I will post an author's comment on the next one to let people who read the unedited version to come back and read it again. I added a little bit. Thanks to the person who told me I spelled Skaia wrong I seriously ALWAYS spell that wrong. Anyway. So sorry._ **

**So I have been SO crazy busy recently, but a good busy. I was going to write this last night but I fell down some stairs and fucked up my ankle so I was kind of lazy and wanted to just lay around like a piece of trash while I complained to my boyfriend. Good times. I love him. Hehe ANYWAY this was actually a hard chapter to write because its like... lots of important crap but also boring I guess? It's necessary. I just wanted it to still be interesting. I find that I enjoy writing Jake. **

**Anyway, the response for the last chapter was phenomenal, and I am overwhelmed. Thank you all so much for the support. My boyfriend is suffocating me with hugs right now so ima go snuggle him back. 33 **

**-CS**


	27. Chapter 27

_"And high on emotion, has been a killer for days_  
_It's wearing you out until you slowly fade_  
_Where is that needle, or that damaging blade_  
_It's cutting you up until it empties your gauge_

_I want you, to stand up and fight every moment with me_  
_For the truth, it's your love_  
_Your destiny that I see"_

* * *

Jade was afraid to believe Jane's words. She was afraid to let herself believe that they might actually be able to bring him back, only to have to bear the weight of loss again if and when it did not work. Hope welled up in her anyway, and she twisted her fingers together nervously as they made their way back through the lab. Jake and Dirk trailed behind the rest of them, and by looking at them anyone might have thought it was Dirk who was comforting Jake, not the other way around. He had his arm around his shoulder, Jake's hand reaching up to touch Dirk's gingerly as it settled on his shoulder. Upon closer inspection Jade could see the strain of the blonde boy's features, something she recognized from learning to read Dave's own subtle expressions. He was worried or sad perhaps, but Jake seemed to know how to manage him. He knew what he needed.

Jade wondered fleetingly if the two of them were together, especially considering the sad looks Jane would give them when she thought no one was paying attention. Was she jealous, or worried? Roxy walked beside her and every time she caught her looking at them she would bump her shoulder and giggle as if it were an accident, causing Jane to snap out of it. Often the blonde girl would lean over and loudly whisper into Jane's ear, and though Jane would look annoyed with her friend, she also smiled and seemed genuinely at ease. Jade thought she should be friendlier with them all, but it was all she could do to keep herself going, and the small smile she tried to keep up was fueled only by the tiny spark of hope she was afraid to feel in the first place. Jade shook her head and tried to think about something else.

As the group of them entered the room where Dave laid, Jade's stomach clenched to see that the impact of the meteor had thrown his body across the floor. His glasses were askew on his face which was now slightly uncovered by the sheet, and his arm lay at a weird angle to his side, his horribly pale fingers curled a little and palm up. The reality of his death hit her hard, and she felt her eyes well up with fresh tears. She ran to his side and pushed his sunglasses back up the bridge of his nose the way she had seen Terezi do what felt like eons before. Without Jade having noticed her following, Terezi knelt to his side as well and gently straightened out his limbs. Jade looked at her and smiled weakly through her tears, and Terezi looked back at her, mouth straight and washed out teal tears falling behind her own glasses.

Jane walked over to the body, and Terezi moved aside to allow her to kneel beside him. Jade did not move from him, running her fingers through his blonde hair as she tried to stop the tears. She did not know who or what she was praying to, but a single line kept repeating in her mind. _Let him wake up. Please let him wake up._ Jane placed her hands on his chest and looked up at her, a worried expression on her face. "I've never done this before; I have only healed wounds before, really. I came back myself once but gosh that was not exactly purposeful. I really… truly hope this works, Jade." Jade swallowed and looked at her as more tears streamed from her eyes. It had to work, she needed it to work. She needed to tell him how sorry she was for everything. She needed to hear him laugh, see those beautiful red eyes looking back into hers.

Jade reached to touch Dave's pale face with her hands, running her fingers gently along the edges of his lips, imagining him breathing against them again. She held her own breath as Jane pressed her fingertips against his chest, beginning to glow a soft white. Her eyebrows furrowed in concentration, and slowly Dave's entire body was enveloped in the glow. Jade pressed her face to his neck, waiting for a pulse or a breath or some form of movement. _Come on. Please please wake up._ After what felt like a terribly long time the white light faded away, receding back into Jane's hands, and Jade looked up at her with fear and anger. "You have to keep trying! Please!" Jane bit her lip uncertainly, and then seemed to have an idea.

"Lift the sheet and show me the wound that killed him." Jade did as she asked, feeling a knot of fear forming in her throat as her eyes met the bloodstained remains of her shirt around his stomach. She gingerly removed them, and when she was done she lifted his shirt to right below his ribs. The gash in his stomach was ghastly against the pale white of his skin. Jane did not flinch as she touched her fingers to the wound, and began glowing again. Jade watched transfixed as the skin around it began to repair itself, eventually leaving him with a wound that much more closely resembled a bad bruise than an open cut. It looked wrong against his placid flesh, but better than it had before. "I will try again." Jane moved her hands back up to his chest and once again focused her energy, glowing more fiercely than she had before.

"Wake up please." Jade choked out as she stared at his still unmoving features. It should have been working. If it were going to save him it should have been already. She felt her anger and fear burst out of her and she gripped his shoulders and shook him. "Come on Dave. You have to wake up! Come on!" She was crying again, hard, and Jane looked at her with tears in her own eyes as she glowed brighter and brighter, putting all of her energy into Dave. "Please please please…" Jade pressed her face to his and sobbed, kissing him gently on the edges of his mouth. "p-please god please…" she cried and begged between kisses.

"It's not working. We were fucking kidding ourselves." Karkat grumbled behind them, looking a mixture of upset and frustrated. Jade could see them all standing there in the corner of her eye, all hunched together. John had Rose in his arms and she was hiding her face away from the whole scene. Dirk merely stared, a slight frown, his hand as always in Jake's.

"Come on KK, let them try." Sollux broke in, placing a hand on Karkat's shoulder.

"It has to work!" Terezi pleaded, still crying as she gripped Karkat's hand in her own.

"Don't you think I want him to be okay, too? Jegus, we're torturing ourselves with this." Jade wished they would stop. She needed to believe it would work. She looked back to his still face, and it was illuminated with the light from Jane's efforts. She sobbed again and pressed her mouth to his cold lips, her tears marring his face as she pressed herself to him. Just as she was about to pull away something held her there, and she was vaguely aware of the voices that were elevating around her. A hand found its way into her hair, and the lips that had only moments before been still were moving against her own, hungrily taking her in. She was so shocked that she cried into his mouth, and he raised the hand that was not in her hair to touch her cheek gently, brushing away her tears. He kissed her for a moment longer and then pulled his face away enough to speak.

"Come on Harley you know I can't take it when you cry. Cool guy's kryptonite." She smiled so big that it hurt, and the tears were still streaming from her eyes. She cried harder, unable to say anything through the sobs that wracked her body. He wrapped his long arms around her and pulled her into his chest, kissing her hair gently as she gripped at his shirt. "Please don't cry anymore." He whispered, and she smiled again.

"I'm just so h-happy you're okay!" she said, and he laughed and held her tighter. Dave did not let her go as he sat up, greeted by a sea of faces, some of which he recognized and some he did not. John ran up to him and wrapped his arms in an incredibly tight hug, and Rose followed with a much more distinguished one. He kept a straight face through all of, as was expected. John just made fun of him, and he countered easily, both of them smiling at one another when it was all said and done. When his eyes fell on his brother, he saw the grin on his face and had to laugh inwardly.

"Sup Bro?" he asked, and the other boy scoffed and lowered his head a bit to look at him over the rims on his pointy anime shades.

"Not a whole fuckin' lot, _bro_." he countered, and Dave shot him a smirk back. "I guess we just found out why the two of you never had the chance to give any of us the time of day." Dave lifted an eyebrow as his eyes fell on his bro's hand, firmly cupped in the hand of the other boy from the new session.

"Hm." Dirk squeezed the dark-haired boy's hand tighter, and he had to laugh. It was so similar to how he had been with Jade when John had tried to do the same thing. He decided to let it go. "I am motherfuckin' made of time. Didn't you get the memo?" he finished, successfully redirecting the focus of the conversation.

"All talk." Dirk countered, and Dave leaned back as Jade curled against him. His eyes landed on Jane, and she was staring at her hands as if transfixed. He felt Jade lift her own face to look at the girl as well. When Dave looked down at Jade she was smiling.

"Thank you so much, Jane. I really don't know if I can ever… just thank you!" She glanced back up at Dave as she spoke. She must have saved his life, recognizing the emblem on her outfit. He nodded at her, as if to thank her as well.

"I'm glad it worked. I really am." Roxy moved to her best friends side and trapped her in a huge hug, rocking back and forth on her heels as she did so.

"Awwww Jaaaaney you did just sooo good. I just knew you would!" she giggled again, and Jade heard Rose sighing and laughing a bit. Jade wiped away the tears in her eyes and put her arms around Dave, and he looked down at her, a small smirk at the edges of his mouth. Her face was pale and blotchy from crying, and there were dark circles under her eyes. Without hesitation he moved his arms under her and lifted her into his arms, and she wrapped hers around his neck to steady herself.

"Well, I'm out. I hope you all won't be too lost without me for a little while, though I know it's a fuckin' a pointless request. I'm just askin' you guys to at least try."

"You are such a fuckass, Strider. What the fuck would we care?" Karkat scowled, and Dave laughed.

"That the best you can do, Vantas?" he countered as he pushed past everyone, Jade still in his arms. Karkat grimaced, but it was obvious he was just as happy as everyone else.

As they began to walk down the hall, Dave pressed his face into Jade's hair and kissed her as she pulled herself closer to him. She was crying again, and he stopped for a moment and took a hand to lift her face to his. "What's up?" he asked, a frown on his own face as she bit her lip.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." She said, and he shook his head before pressing his mouth to hers, gripping her face gently as her fingers traced against his chest. He suddenly felt the weird sensation of teleportation, and before he knew what was happening he was back in his bedroom, Jade grinning up at him sweetly. He grinned back and pulled her face back to his, falling to the bed with her still wrapped up in his arms.

* * *

**If you did not already see, I have made some edits to the previous chapter and so if you read it early today or last night you might wanna go skim it or something. Nothing too substantial, but I think it reads better now. **

**In other news... I wanted to make it clear to everyone that I'm not expecting to get everything right, because at this point Homestuck is not finished being written and so all I can do is come up with a story based on what I know or I, myself, speculate. Call this AU, that's fine. Totes fine, bros. I'm sorry if that's a problem for anyone. Just spinning off of what I already know based off of updates when I began this fic. **

**Anyway, gosh, just thanks again for all the lovely comments, and the help with the last chapter. That was just a little bit of a disaster for me I hope not to make so many mistakes again. You guys are awesome! Also my ankle is feeling lots better, just cant move it too much right now. So sweet of you guys to care. Stay cool. BD **

**-CS **


	28. Chapter 28

**(NSFW)**

Dave had his mouth against the soft skin of Jade's neck, and she was moaning quietly against him, her fingers running through his hair and pressing into his skin. It was overwhelming being so close to her again, and his mind was foggy as he took in the feel of her pressed against him, the sound of her voice. He was literally aching with want, needing to be closer, to feel more, to hear her again and again. He did not realize until that moment how much he had actually missed her, and he could not make himself slow down as he pushed his hands up underneath her shirt, fingertips brushing up against thin material of her bra. She whimpered at his touch as he moved his hands to cup her, and he bit softly against her neck, brushing his tongue lightly over her skin. God, she tasted amazing. He rocked his hips involuntarily, and he felt her hands grip him harder as he brushed the heat between her legs with his own.

"D-dave, n-no wait…" she moaned, breathing hard into his hair. He raised his face to hers immediately, his heart thumping hard in his chest as his body froze up. His head raced with questions, wondering if he had upset her, if he had gone too far. He pressed his mouth into a line and tried not to let his worry show. She just looked up at him with those big, beautiful green eyes of hers and looked so tired and worried that it scared him.

"W-what's up?" he sputtered, unable to keep a tremor out of his voice. _So smooth, Strider._ She raised her hand to brush the hair away from his face, and then along with her other hand she removed the sunglasses from his face. He tensed up a little, but it did not last long as his uncovered eyes met with hers, and there was so much affection in them that he could barely handle it. She had never looked at him quite like that before.

"Did you mean it? What you said… you know… when you saved me?" she asked, and a flash of worry crossed those big expressive eyes of hers.

"What are you talkin' about, Harley" he responded easily, having to work very hard to keep his face straight. He knew he wasn't terribly convincing when she could see his eyes. Despite it, fear and, if he was not mistaken, a bit of frustration crossed her features as she grabbed the collar of his shirt in her small hands.

"Y-you know? When you said that you… and I said it back and… oh my God, Dave don't do this to me! You have to remember!" he pressed his lips together but he knew he was not keeping the amusement from his eyes. He did his best to look confused and it must have been convincing because real anger showed on her face and she was blushing furiously. "Really? You… ahhhh this is so…" and she blushed harder, and to his surprise tears appeared at the edges of her eyes. That was it, he was done.

"Oh come on, Harley." He said sweetly, not holding back the small smile that came to his lips. He leaned down and nuzzled her cheek and laughed a little against her. "I love you, Jade. Of course I meant it. Jegus, I didn't mean to upset you so much please don't cry." He heard her take a quick intake of breath and her grip on his shirt loosened.

"You are soooo… augh!" she half-yelled as she reached her hands to her face to wipe the tears from her eyes. Dave reached out to take them into his own, and she struggled against him. His expression was all concern now, and she tried hard not to look at him, jerking her face as far to the side as far as she could manage. He slowly leaned toward her and kissed her softly beneath her eyes. Every time he would raise his face away from hers he would tell her again. _I love you. _ She finally looked back up at him, and when her eyes met his own he knew he had won her over. She smiled at him and laced her fingers with his, and he smiled back at her.

"I love you too, cool kid. So, so much!" She said, a deep blush rising in her cheeks. Those words went through him like electricity, and he could not hold himself back anymore. He wanted her, all of her. He pressed his mouth to hers, and she responded, taking his bottom lip between her own and sucking softly as he moaned. She had him, and he knew it. He could not be separated from her again. He kissed her hard and deep, the sounds he made mirroring her own as he rocked against her.

Jade pulled her hands away from his, and so he tangled his then free hands into her hair, never pulling away from her mouth as his breathing came in shallow pants. When he felt her hands beneath his shirt his body shivered with anticipation. As she slowly pushed it up over his chest, he forced himself away from her so she could push it up the rest of the way over his head to throw it to the floor. He tried to lean back over to kiss her again, but she had her hands on his shoulders and kept him upright as she stared at the dark bruise on his stomach. Slowly she leaned forward and pressed her mouth to the wound, kissing him gently against it. She traced the sides of his waist with her fingertips as she kissed her way down to his hips, right above the band of his pants. His heart was racing in his chest and he could feel the rigid heat of his erection straining the cloth of his pants and boxers. He twisted his fingers into her hair and gripped as she teased him with her tongue, trying desperately not to buck his hips when the sensation was too much. He wanted more. God, did he want more, but he tried to be patient.

When he felt her hands slide around to the curve of his back he whined a little under his breath, and gently pushed her face away from his bare torso as his muscles contracted with aching desire. He pulled her up to face him and kissed her as he pushed his own shaking hands up under her shirt. She raised her arms and in one swift motion the shirt was over her head and thrown onto the floor next to his own discarded clothing. He reached for the clasp of her bra as she traced his collarbone with her fingers, and after a bit of fidgeting he was able to remove it as well. His fingers rose to touch her lightly on the sensitive, unshielded skin, and she whimpered sweetly into his mouth as she leaned forward to press his hand more firmly to her. His fingers moved deftly, pinching the sensitive skin of her nipple as she breathed hard against him, and he could feel himself getting hotter by the second. He wanted to make her feel so good.

With one free arm he pulled her body to his own and shuddered at the feeling of her bare skin against his own. He worked the hand on her back down below the belt of her long skirt, and gripped and ran his fingers against the bare skin beneath her panties. She moaned loudly and bucked her own hips against him and he moved back against her, rubbing his heat against her own. His mind was foggy with lust and want and need to be closer to her, to feel her against him with nothing between them, and without hesitation he moved his shaking hands to her hips and grasped the belt of her skirt as he pulled down on it. She raised her hips to allow him to pull the skirt down over her legs. Then she was there, just in her panties and nothing else, flushed and chest heaving as she stared back at him with half-lidded eyes. God she was beautiful, soft curves and milky smooth skin. He could not control how much he wanted her.

He took his hands and groped at the bare skin of her hips and her thighs, and then moved to place wet kisses along the line of her hipbone, brushing his hot tongue against her as she moaned. His fingers teased her, tucking barely under the band of her panties to brush her skin, and she bucked ever so slightly to him. He began to slowly push the cloth down her hips, and she raised herself up again to let him do so. Once they were off her he took a moment to pull off her sneakers and socks, and kissed her ankle as he reached down to remove his own shoes. She giggled a little, and it was such a sweet sound. He moved back up to kiss her on the mouth, his hand trailing down her stomach to the heat between her legs, and when he pressed his fingers against her she moaned heavily into his mouth. She was so wet as he circled his fingers against her, and as she bucked up against him she whined high and breathy in her throat. She had never been so eager before, and it was driving him crazy.

Dave bucked his own hips against her thigh as he worked her, and she gripped him hard as he got her to the peak of pleasure. When she shuddered against him in her ecstasy, he shoved his slick fingers inside her to eagerly work her sensitive spot, and she was nearly screaming as he pressed against it, her body shaking hard as the tremors of orgasm washed over her. As the feeling in her began to ebb away, she moved her mouth from his and pulled him into the crook of her neck where he bit her softly, his fingers still inside her. "I love you, I love you..." she said, voice breathy and desperate, and just the sound of those words sent a wave of anticipation through his body. She pushed him away from her, then, and moved her hands to the waist of his own pants, and gripping his boxers as well she pushed them down to his knees, brushing him teasingly with her hand as she reached back up to touch his face.

Dave reached down and pulled his pants the rest of the way off himself, and then they were both completely bare in front of each other, their eyes searching one another eagerly. Jade pulled him back down, and he felt himself brush the wet heat between her legs. It was almost too much. He was so hard, and he could not help but buck his hips against her as their lips met, both hungrily biting and sucking at each other. He rubbed against her, and they both moaned into each other, breathing in desperately with borrowed air. When Jade reached down to hold him, he let out a loud cry and he felt her smile against him. She moved to touch the tip of him to her which sent shivers up his spine, and it was all he could do not to enter her in that moment, but instead he pulled his mouth from hers and looked at her.

"Are you sure?" he asked, any calm he had maintained gone. He was just eager and scared and excited, and he let her see everything. "You have to be sure." He said, and his mouth trembled a bit as her blush deepened.

"I want you, Dave. I love you, I want you, and I'm sure." She responded, and there was no fear in her voice as she said it. He pressed his mouth to hers and very slowly pressed himself into her. She whined in pain, but held him to her harder and pushing back so he knew he could keep going. He was so careful, and when he was completely inside her he shuddered involuntarily as he felt her muscles contract around him. It was by far the best sensation of his life. He stayed still, and when he pulled back to look at her there were tears in her eyes. He ran his hands gently through her hair and kissed her sweetly over and over on her cheeks and eyes and at the edges of her mouth, and soon her breathing slowed down and her face relaxed.

"Tell me when you're ready" he whispered, staying as still as he could, kissing her again as she stared back up at him, cheeks flushed a deep red.

"I-I'm ready… go slow…" she said, a whimper in her voice. He pressed his mouth to hers and pulled slowly out as she trembled beneath him, a moan escaping her lips. He moved so slowly that it was driving him crazy, and he gripped her shoulders to keep control of himself. When she seemed to relax, and the noises began to sound more like pleasure than pain, he began to move faster. The pleasure shot through his body was intense as his breathing ran ragged. "O-oh God that f-feels amazing." She finally moaned out, and he pressed harder into her, gaining rhythm as her sounds of desire coaxed him on. Soon he had forgotten to be gentle, his mind was reeling with lust and the sounds of her driving him crazy, and the feel of her nails pressing into the skin of his back as she keened and begged for more. She was dripping wet and he slid easily into her, pumping harder as she contracted around him.

When he felt himself on the edge of ecstasy, waves of pleasure coming hard and fast through his body, he quickly pulled out of her and pressed his hips to hers, sliding hard against the wet heat and moaning loud in his pleasure. She bucked back up against him as he spilled himself between the two of them, his breathing hard and heavy as she kissed him again and again. When the last tremors of pleasure washed through him, he pushed himself up to kiss her softly on the mouth. When he finally pulled back away she was smiling and brushing her hand against his flushed cheek.

"Sup! Hehe!" she said, her grin widening by the moment.

"Heh. Good one." He responded, smiling back at her.

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**Do I smell... lemons? Also I hope you guys got the reference at the end of this. Because it's important to me.**

**This is actually the last real chapter, but there will be an epilogue and then an important author's note so stick with me for one more. You guys are amazing and thank you so much for the support you have show so far, especially the ones who have been around since the beginning of the fic. The response to this was more than I anticipated, and I am so, so grateful. **

**-CS**


	29. Epilogue

"Dave, are you ready?" Jade squeezed his hand in hers and he squeezed back, and she saw his lips curve up into the smile she loved so much.

"You bet." He replied in a cool, confident tone as he turned his head slowly to look at her. She flashed him a huge smile, despite the fear she was doing well to keep hidden.

"Don't worry, Strider. I'll protect you!" She joked, and he pulled her into his arms and pressed his nose to hers, smiling a big genuine toothy grin that he only ever gave to her. She giggled and wrapped her arms around his neck, levitating slightly above the ground to press her face closer to his.

"Yeah I know." He told her, right before pressing his lips her hers. She melted into him as he ran his hands lightly along the back of her neck, gently pulling her harder to him. The real fight was finally beginning, and their time together was ending fast, but they took every moment they could. "Don't run off again. I don't think John could take it." He said in a softer tone, and she knew very well he was talking about himself, and not John, but was way too cool to admit it right there in the open.

"Never, never!" She was smiling and staring right into his eyes, close enough to see them beneath his dark shades. Tears began to run down her cheeks despite herself, and Dave easily lifted his fingers to wipe them away. "We fight together, right? We can't lose if we're together!" He smirked at her, obviously amused by her bright optimism.

"Those assholes don't stand a chance." He replied smoothly, and it was Jade who pressed her lips to his again, unable to resist them, and dying to memorize the feel of him against her before they had to run off and fight. She could feel him trembling softly as her lips met his, and she ran her long fingers through his blonde hair to calm him. He held her so tightly she felt her heart might burst, and she loved it. She loved everything about the moment, and hated it more because it had to end so soon. The game was always cruel, however, and there were worse thing to face than they could make themselves dwell on.

"Hey Bro, it's nice that you two can share such a tender moment, but I think it's having an adverse effect on the ladies." Jade pulled away from the kiss, startled by the reminder that the two of them were not alone on the roof. Everyone was there, in fact, and apparently all eyes had been on the two of them for the past few seconds. The "ladies" that Dirk was referring to seemed to actually be Jake and John who were standing right behind the stoic blonde, John's lower lip trembling dramatically and Jake with tears rolling down his cheeks.

"It's just like the movies!" exclaimed John.

"I know. It's just so… Gosh it's just so romantic!" Jake agreed. Dirk turned his head a little to look at Jake, and Jade was sure he smirked for half a second at the two dark haired boys hugging each other like emotional schoolgirls.

When Jade turned back to Dave, he was grinning, calm as ever, but she had a feeling he had been as startled as her judging by the way he was still clutching at her hand. She bounced off the ground and curled her knees to her chest, glowing a dim green light as she hovered over the ground, wrapping her arms around his neck and nuzzling his cheek. That was apparently too much, and she felt Dave's cheeks grow warm with heat, but even then he laced his fingers with her and his poker face never slipped. She giggled a little as she put her feet back on the ground and turned toward the group again, meeting the faces of her friends and allies.

Dave stared at the girl in front of him, long dark hair cascading down to her lower back, and he felt a swell of affection that was so unbelievably uncool he was almost embarrassed. He had never really understood how much she meant to him until it was almost too late, knowing now he would rather die for her than live without her. What was the more unexpected revelation was that she felt the same way. She needed him, the same way he needed her, and for the first time in his life he felt, really felt that he was worth something. Worth surviving to be by her side. Something so worth dying for, and more so worth living for. That was everything to him.

Dave moved to her side and wrapped his arms around her shoulders from the back, and leaned his face to her ear, feeling her shudder a bit and he breathed over it. "I love you."

In what felt like far too little time, they were forced into the fray again, this time stronger with one another. However formidable they were, the game forced them all to their limits time and time again, facing much less forgiving adversaries then they had before. Their losses were great, but their victories were greater, and in the end the prize was worth the long fight, but everyone had scars. In the grand scheme, it could be summarized in this succinct manner, but the truth was that the greater victories were the ones won during the lull. The time they spent laughing and fighting and and loving one another. Figuring out how much their friendships were worth, and finding their own worth in between.

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**The End! **

**Okay, so I have EXCELLENT NEWS. The day that I posted the last chapter I was accepted to AO3 and so I have been busy the past few days setting up something very special. I am posting this fic on that website as well, but... wait for it...**

**WITH ILLUSTRATIONS**

**IN EVERY CHAPTER.**

**Oh yes. Even if you do not want to read it again, I implore you to keep up just for the illustrations. So far I have been very pleased with he results, and I think you will be too! My handle on AO3 is artsyUnderstudy (the same as my dA account) and the fic is under the same name, it should not be too hard to find.**

**http:/archiveofourown(.)org/works/410885/chapters/681675**

**Otherwise, thank you all SO MUCH for the support, this has been such a fun ride for me, and your feedback has been wonderful. I am currently planning out another Dave/Jade fic, but I am also considering turning this fic into a series wherin i focus on different couples, namely Terezi/Karkat, Rose/Kanaya, and Dirk/Jake within the confines of this "universe". That is a big ol' maybe, and I probably wont do anything for a while, but keep an eye out!**

**All of my love, homestucks. You are all wonderful.**

**Thank you.**

**-CS**


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